GREENIE WATCH

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the
environment. Most Greenie causes are, however, at best red-herrings and are more
motivated by a hatred of people than anything else.

John Ray (M.A.;
Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Antarctic change dependent on the period
chosen

This is very much the point I made in my
original post on this matter. If you go back far enough, you can find an
early period of warming but there has been no warming in the last 30 years.
Excerpt only below. Lots of illustrative graphs in the original

We
have reported on many occasions about the climate history of Antarctica,
basically concluding that the frozen continent was not warming up during the
most recent couple of decades, despite expectations that it should have
been.

At first glance, a new paper by the University of Washington's Eric
Steig and colleagues, published in last week's Nature magazine and featured as
its cover story, may seem to challenge our understanding-at least that is how it
was spun to the press (see here and here, for example).

But a closer look
at what the paper really says-as opposed to what is said about the paper-shows
that there is not much in need of changing with the current understanding of
Antarctica's temperature history. We'll show you why.....

Over the
long-term, that is, since 1957 when the first continuous temperature records
from Antarctica began, all three records show that there is a warming tendency
(the magnitude of the warming differs between the three papers, with the Steig
et al. derivation showing the most). Also notice that over the most recent
several decades (since the early 1970s) all three show that there has been
little net change-basically the vast majority of the long-term warming in
Antarctica took place from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

This is
hardly news. In fact, in our very first World Climate-type publication, released
back in 1995, in an article titled "Antarctic Warming: New Old News" we
discussed the day's hot news that Antarctica was warming -and put the warming in
perspective-all of it occurring prior to the early 1970s.

Clearly, not
much as changed in the past 14 years-it still makes headlines that "Antarctica
is warming!" when in fact, the temperature averaged over the entire continent
(using whichever methodology you prefer) hasn't changed much in more than three
decades.

If you are interested in why this latest pronouncement has
gained so much attention (from both sides of the debate), very interesting
articles can be found at RealClimate, MasterResource, and Prometheus. Each
provides a unique take on the situation.

The GDP might have
contracted 5.4 percent annualized in 4Q08, but the AGW industry contracted about
50 percent in one week:

Hansen's Boss: James Hansen, AGW's Father of
Lies, received an insulting, public rebuke from his old boss at NASA. In
essence, Dr. John Theon of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies,
accused of Hansen of violating basic scientific principles, NASA's scientific
methodologies and policies, and of embarrassing the agency with his
anti-scientific screeds on global warming. Theon's emails portray Hansen has a
fraudulent liar. (Where have you heard that before?")

More Scientists
Turn Skeptics: The parade of scientists who doubt Hansen, Gore, and the whole
AGW theory never ends. This week the world's foremost authority on scientific
forecasting, Dr. J. Scott Armstrong, declared that the IPCC's global warming
documents have no basis in science and violate 72 specific principle of
scientific forecasting. As the founder of the largest forecaster certification
body, Armstrong effectively pronounced the IPCC invalid.

Arctic Gulls in
Massachusetts: Arctic gulls returned to Massachusetts for the first time in over
100 years, validating AGW-monger fears that climate change would alter the
migratory patterns of animals. Unfortunately for the AGW people, this migration
change came about because the earth is getting cold, fast.

Gore Effect:
Al Gore testified before the Senate in Washington. The weather cooperated. Snow
and ice and record low temperatures blanketed the Eastern half of the United
States.

The job of conservatism is not to attempt science, but to look
for political bias in purportedly scientific claims. The AGW hysterics are based
exclusively on political goals: the elimination of human freedom. Don't let them
win. Don't be afraid to challenge your friends and co-workers to repeat the lies
they hear from James Hansen and Al Gore and Michael Mann. Your friends might not
have the educational advantages you've had-perhaps advanced degrees in
prestigious universities destroyed their critical thinking skills. It's up to us
to help them.

Ho-hum. On January 28, in the midst of a
pelting sleet storm, Al Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that
the end is nigh from global warming. He told the Senate that "some scientists"
predict up to 11 degrees of warming in the next 91 years (while failing to note
that the last 12 have seen exactly none), and that this would "bring a
screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fiber of life everywhere
on earth". Hey folks, this is serious!

Besides having a remarkable knack
for scheduling big speeches on remarkably cold or snowy days (it's known as the
"Gore Effect" in journalistic circles), Gore has been incredibly ineffective in
bringing his message home. According to the New York Times, Gore told the Web
2.0 Summit in San Francisco last November, "I feel, in a sense, I've failed
badly. . . . [T]here is not anything anywhere close to an appropriate sense of
urgency [about global warming]. This is an existential threat."

And fail
he has. The Pew Foundation recently asked Americans to choose which of 20
prominent issues is of most importance. They included the economy, crime,
education, and, of course, global warming, which came in dead
last.

Gore's failure is his own fault. He gained a reputation for
exaggeration during his 2000 campaign, and he's unable to shake it-because he's
proud of it, saying that it's just fine to emphasize extreme global warming
scenarios because they get people's attention. Telling people you're
exaggerating isn't exactly the way to get street cred. In Washington on January
28, his campaign continued.

The fact is that the "fiber of life" can be
found on this planet over a range of 140øF, from Antarctica to the Death Valley.
People actually live in these places. The average temperature of the planet is
about 61ø, a temperature at which Homo sapiens au naturel will die from
hypothermia. So ask yourself if raising the temperature 11 (impossible) degrees
will indeed bring civilization to a "screeching halt."

It's not like the
press is very vigilant, either. A couple of years ago, he got a free pass on
Larry King Live (May 22, 2007) after making at least seven exaggerations or
outright misstatements on climate change in less than a minute. Gore fielded a
call asking "what issues caused by climate change globally are likely to affect
the United States security during the next ten years?" He responded, "you know,
even a one-meter increase, even a three-foot increase in sea level would cause
tens of millions of climate refugees."

In ten years? The United Nations'
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hardly an apolitical body (the
IPCC's "lead authors" are all appointed by their governments), gives an average
sea-level rise of 1.25 inches in the next ten years for its "midrange"
temperature scenario. Never mind that it hasn't warmed since 1997 and that
sea-level rise is clearly slowing as a result.

Gore went on: "Today, 49
percent of America is in conditions of drought or near-drought", and that "the
odds of serious droughts increase when the average temperatures go up." That's a
testable hypothesis. The history of U.S. drought back to 1895 is readily
available from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina,
as is the history of global temperature. Although surface temperatures have
risen about 1.4 degrees since 1900 (with maybe half of that a result of
emissions of carbon dioxide), there's no similar trend in U.S. drought. Gore had
to know that.

In the same minute, he droned on about how in a hotter
world, "agriculture in the United States would be greatly affected." Thanks, Al,
for another assertion subject to analysis. The slight rise in surface
temperature was accompanied by a 500 percent increase in United States yield of
corn (that's the amount we produce per acre). How could any possible warming in
ten years put a dent in that? The IPCC projects about 0.3 degrees of warming per
decade now, or about a fifth of the total warming of the last 100 years. That's
going to "greatly affect" agriculture?

People notice these exaggerations.
They see that food is still on the table (despite the government's attempt to
burn it up as ethanol). They know the country isn't particularly dry, nor
particularly wet. They can go to the beach and see that the ocean isn't notably
higher than it was before. In other words, Gore's lack of penetration is a
result his own exaggerations. He's created a climate of extremes that people are
simply tired of, which is why his issue ranks dead last. He's right. He's
failed.

Well, the "Second Public Review Draft of
the Unified Synthesis Product Global Climate Change in the United States" has
been published for comment (due February 27), and we see how they decided to
deal with the embarrassment posed by their insistence on calling co-lead author
"Dr." Tom Karl: they dropped such honorifics from . . . everyone. How. Pathetic.
That must've been a fun one to sit through.

Of course, a quick search for
his name to confirm this also manages to remind us how the drafting team has
chosen to plow ahead with their highly questionable practice of citing their own
and each other's work to support their supposed independent
assessment.

So the answer, Dr. Wegman, is that no, these people did not
learn from your assessment, e.g., this passage slamming the same community and
practice in the process of debunking the "Hockey Stick":

In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in
temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties
to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this
analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely
connected and thus `independent studies' may not be as independent as they
might appear on the surface. This committee does not believe that web logs are
an appropriate forum for the scientific debate on this issue.

It is
important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though
they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting
with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of
research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In
this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was
not necessarily independent. Moreover, the work has been sufficiently
politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public positions
without losing credibility.

The same condition plagues this
product. We noted this in our original comments, and will again. All previously
commenting parties should check this thing out and weigh in as
appropriate.

Like famished swine shoving each other aside to get to the
trough, self-proclaimed scientists and real politicians are again launching
headline upon headline to claim yet another disaster in the name of utterly
unproven global warming. Did you know that the flock of geese that flew into US
Airways jet engines this month in New York City were put there by global
warming? And that London fogs, or rather their absence, are making global
warming worse?

Yep. It's right there in the paper, Maud. As scientific
skeptics are finally discovering the courage to speak out, the hype machine is
faltering just a little.

But President Obama just appointed a True
Believer to be science czar in the White House. So we can expect the politicians
to keep hammering on this little piggy bank until the last golden coin drops
out. You'll be paying for the biggest false alarm in history for years to
come.

But what worries me most is that the credibility of science may
never recover - and perhaps it shouldn't. Credibility has to be earned, and once
it's squandered may never be recovered. By now far too many scientists have
knowingly colluded in an historic fraud, one that would put Bernie Madoff to
shame. We are seeing political larceny here on a truly planetary scale. Why
should scientists who've gambled their own reputations on this fakery ever be
trusted again? They shouldn't. Would you entrust your life savings to Bernie
Madoff? Right.

I'm not a climatologist. Like most scientists I rarely
judge what others do in their fields. And yet it's been flamingly obvious for
years now that the hypothesis of human-caused global warming violates all the
basic rules and safeguards that protect the integrity of normal, healthy
science. That's why AGW (anthropogenic global warming) looks like a massive
fraud, the biggest fraud ever in the history of science.

If that's true,
anybody who cares about science should be outraged. Even if you don't care about
that ask yourself if you want your next medical exam to be honest. Or the next
time you drive across a traffic bridge, do you want the engineering tests to be
falsified? If scientific corruption becomes endemic, we risk losing one of the
great jewels of our culture.

So here are some fundamental violations of
scientific integrity that any thoughtful person should recognize. I'm not going
to touch on climatology - the case against the warming hypothesis has already
been made very well by experts. I just want to talk scientific common
sense.

Threatening the skeptics.

Scientists get seduced by
enticing ideas and bits of evidence all the time. That's why every scientist
I've ever known is a thorough-going skeptic, even about his or her own data.
Especially about one's own data, because one's career is on the line if it
doesn't check out. So we need skepticism in ourselves and others. Good science
honors the rational skeptic. Which is why it's beyond outrageous that AGW
believers are publicly attacking thoughtful skeptics - not on the facts, but on
their sheer temerity in doubting their precious orthodoxy. According to the
Guardian:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will
today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put
on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of
actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco
companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

That is
Stalinism; it is never, ever done in real science. Stalin shot real scientists
and promoted scientific frauds who helped to kill Soviet food production. Right
there we know we're looking at political corruption and not real
science.

What
happened to the "loss" of rainforest that Greenies are always moaning
about?

It's long been known -- to those who see fit to enquire --
that the land covered by forest INCREASED in the USA in the 20th century -- but
now it's happening elsewhere too --- for much the same reason: The efficiency of
modern agriculture with all its wicked fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides
-- not to mention "fuel guzzling" tractors

The land where Marta
Ortega de Wing raised hundreds of pigs until 10 years ago is being overtaken by
galloping jungle - palms, lizards and ants. Instead of farming, she now shops at
the supermarket and her grown children and grandchildren live in places like
Panama City and New York. Here, and in other tropical countries around the
world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing's - and much larger swaths of
farmland - are reverting to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the
cities in search of better livings.

These new "secondary" forests are
emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace
that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain
forest - an iconic environmental cause - may be less urgent than once thought.
By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50
acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed,
logged or ravaged by natural disaster. "There is far more forest here than there
was 30 years ago," said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango
trees and banana plants.

The new forests, the scientists argue, could
blunt the effects of rain forest destruction by absorbing carbon dioxide, the
leading heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, one crucial role that rain
forests play. They could also, to a lesser extent, provide habitat for
endangered species.

The idea has stirred outrage among environmentalists
who believe that vigorous efforts to protect native rain forest should remain a
top priority. But the notion has gained currency in mainstream organizations
like the Smithsonian Institution and the United Nations, which in 2005 concluded
that new forests were "increasing dramatically" and "undervalued" for their
environmental benefits. The United Nations is undertaking the first global
catalog of the new forests, which vary greatly in their stage of growth.
"Biologists were ignoring these huge population trends and acting as if only
original forest has conservation value, and that's just wrong," said Joe Wright,
a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute here, who set
off a firestorm two years ago by suggesting that the new forests could
substantially compensate for rain forest destruction.

"Is this a real
rain forest?" Dr. Wright asked, walking the land of a former American cacao
plantation that was abandoned about 50 years ago, and pointing to fig trees and
vast webs of community spiders and howler monkeys. "A botanist can look at the
trees here and know this is regrowth," he said. "But the temperature and
humidity are right. Look at the number of birds! It works. This is a suitable
habitat."

Dr. Wright and others say the overzealous protection of rain
forests not only prevents poor local people from profiting from the rain forests
on their land but also robs financing and attention from other approaches to
fighting global warming, like eliminating coal plants.

But other
scientists, including some of Dr. Wright's closest colleagues, disagree, saying
that forceful protection of rain forests is especially important in the face of
threats from industrialized farming and logging.

The issue has also set
off a debate over the true definition of a rain forest. How do old forests
compare with new ones in their environmental value? Is every rain forest sacred?
"Yes, there are forests growing back, but not all forests are equal," said Bill
Laurance, another senior scientist at the Smithsonian, who has worked
extensively in the Amazon. He scoffed as he viewed Ms. Ortega de Wing's
overgrown land: "This is a caricature of a rain forest!" he said. "There's no
canopy, there's too much light, there are only a few species. There is a lot of
change all around here whittling away at the forest, from highways to
development." While new forests may absorb carbon emissions, he says, they are
unlikely to save most endangered rain-forest species, which have no way to reach
them.

Everyone, including Dr. Wright, agrees that large-scale
rain-forest destruction in the Amazon or Indonesia should be limited or managed.
Rain forests are the world's great carbon sinks, absorbing the emissions that
humans send into the atmosphere, and providing havens for biodiversity. At issue
is how to tally the costs and benefits of forests, at a time when increasing
attention is being paid to global climate management and carbon accounting.

Such has been the fear of Greenland's melting glaciers that well
known Australian science journalist Robyn Williams has claimed sea levels could
rise by 100 metres within the next 100 years. Mr Williams, and other
journalists, have been quick to report on what has become known as the
"Greenland Ice Armageddon".

Last Friday there was an article in one of
the most read science journals, Science, entitled "Galloping Glaciers of
Greenland have Reined Themselves In" by Richard A. Kerr.

Yes, as the
title suggests, the article explains that a wide-ranging survey of glacier
conditions across south eastern Greenland, indicates that glacier melt has
slowed significantly and that it would be wrong to attribute the higher rates of
melt prior to 2005 to global warming or to extrapolate the higher melt rates of
a few years ago into the future.

Mr Kerr was reporting on a presentation
by glaciologist Tavi Murray at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San
Francisco last December. The paper by Dr Murray was co-authored by many other
members of the group at Swansea University in the UK, a team often quoted by Al
Gore and others.

When I read the article last Friday I wondered how Robyn
"100 metres" Williams and other journalists in the mainstream media (MSM) might
report the story. To my amazement they have simply ignored it.

It seems
that the mainstream media is a shameless exaggerator of global warming, and
unable to report anything really significant that contradicts the established
storyline.

Perhaps I should not be surprised, as a lecturer in journalism
explained to me some time ago: journalists only add to narratives, as one might
add to a large tapestry. [5] Yep, so, the mainstream media's news has to all fit
together like a picture. What is reported tomorrow is expected to accord with
what was reported yesterday. But the real world is so much more
complicated.

Friday, January 30, 2009

SCIENTISTS ADVOCATING WARMING ASKED NOT TO
DEBATE THE ISSUE

An email from Nicholas Sault [tikouka@yahoo.com]
in New Zealand

Here indeed is what AGW sceptics are up against,
especially here in New Zealand. The following is taken from a debate that was
set up by the Avenues magazine of Christchurch. The debate featured Dr Gerrit
van der Lingen as the AGW sceptic and Professor Bryan Storey as the AGW
advocate. Their opposing arguments were then judged by a retired high court
judge, Justice John Hansen, who claimed to be an unbiased observer.

In
Dr van der Lingen's argument, he made the observation that Al Gore refuses to
debate the points in his film, An Inconvenient Truth. In Professor Storey's
response he said, quote:

"Our professional bodies recommend that we do not publicly engage
in debates over climate change as it gives a platform for the vocal minority
to express their views, often scientifically incorrect or carefully selected
to distort a longer term trend. This will undoubtedly be the advice that the
former US Vice President Al Gore will have received, influencing his decision
not to engage in televised debates."

If this is not totally
unscientific I do not know what is. The statement unequivocally precludes
discussing the issues with anybody, scientists included. It is not as if the TV
people would make the mistake of putting a layman up against Gore, and even if
they did, he could then be excused for refusing to debate (even though he is a
layman himself). Also it makes nonsense of the judge's claim of being unbiased,
since if New Zealand scientists are told not to debate the issue, the evidence
against AGW is going to go unheard by the supposedly unbiased public, to which
the retired judge belongs.

At first I thought Dr Lingen's comparison of
the one-sided reporting of climate change issues with Nazi propaganda a little
strong, but if peer debate about climate change is not going to be conducted,
the whole issue is an attempt at a scientific whitewash by the AGW proponents.

I
noted with interest in Steven Power's article [US tells Europe No unilateral
cuts in Copenhagen, WSJ, January 27, 2009] the statement by Senator John Kerry
that "there is scientific evidence that greenhouse gases are increasing at four
times the rate they were in the 1990s".

The article does not tell us what
"scientific evidence" Senator Kerry is referring to. What we do know however, is
that all reliable temperature metrics available to us [such as satellite sea
surface and land surface, satellite deep ocean and lower troposphere data]
provide hard-to-argue-with and to some, inconvenient, evidence that global
temperatures have been falling for the better part of the past decade. Basic
scientific principles tell us that if GHGs are growing four times faster than
before but that temperatures are falling, the anthropogenic global warming
hypothesis is falsifying at an accelerating rate, four tines faster than before,
in fact.

Climate realist gets a day in
court

A global warming sceptic has claimed wind farms have no
environmental benefits because carbon emissions are a good thing, a New Zealand
court was told. Christopher de Freitas, an Auckland University climate
scientist, was giving evidence in New Zealand's Environment Court against
Meridian Energy's consent bid for Project Hayes, a $NZ2 billion, 176-turbine,
wind farm on the Lammermoor Range in Central Otago, NZ media reported.

"Climate is not responding to greenhouse gases in the way we thought it
might," Professor de Freitas told the court. "If increasing carbon dioxide is in
fact increasing climate change, its impact is smaller than natural variation.
"People are being misled by people making money out of this."

Mild
warming of the climate was beneficial, especially in New Zealand, which had a
prominent agricultural industry, he suggested. "There is no data to show
benefits in terms of mitigating potential dangerous changes in climate by
offsetting carbon dioxide."

De Freitas has previously argued against
wind energy in New Zealand and urged the Government to consider "clean coal".
Meridian has said that Project Hayes will contribute to a new renewable power
suppply meeting New Zealand's obligation to cut carbon emissions under the Kyoto
Protocol.

Lord Turner of Ecchinswell is to investigate
the collapse of funding for renewable energy projects in Britain after the
recent exit of a string of companies, including BP and Shell.

Speaking
on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Lord Turner, chairman of the
Financial Services Authority (FSA) and of the Government's Committee on Climate
Change, said that the study was a response to mounting scepticism over the
Government's plans for a huge expansion of wind and tidal power.

He said
he was concerned that a number of key projects had been thrown into jeopardy,
including London Array, a œ3 billion scheme to build the world's largest
offshore wind park in the Thames Estuary. "We have to make sure that the present
climate does not set back our plans," he said.

Doubts have surfaced over
the Government's commitment to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions by at least 34
per cent by 2020 as falling oil prices and the global credit crisis have
triggered a funding crisis. Last week E.ON, the German utility group, and
Masdar, a fund controlled by Abu Dhabi, said that they were reconsidering the
viability of the London Array.

The European Union made its
opening gambit in negotiations for a global framework on climate change on
Wednesday with proposals that developing nations curb the growth of their
greenhouse gas emissions.

Rich countries, including those in the EU as
well as the US, are adamant that poor countries must take on such obligations if
negotiations this year on a successor to the Kyoto protocol - the main
provisions of which expire in 2012 - are to be successful.

The proposal,
tabled by the European Commission, said developing countries should curb
emissions by 15-30 per cent of their projected growth by 2020. The proposed
target would not require developing countries actually to cut their emissions,
but would oblige them to make efforts to increase energy efficiency.

Yvo
de Boer, the United Nations official charged with bringing this year's talks to
a successful conclusion in Copenhagen in December, warned that developing
countries were ready to fight a hard battle. "I don't think developing countries
will accept binding targets," he said. A "very robust financing mechanism" would
need to be agreed to ensure the finance flows to the developing world.

The Commission said developed countries should take on the lion's share
of cuts. It estimated that meeting the targets would require $231bn in
additional investment by 2020 for new technology, energy efficiency projects and
other measures, with roughly 100bn euros of that destined for the developing
world. It also predicted that up to 54bn would be required annually by 2030 to
help poorer countries cope with even modest warming.

Development groups
believe rich countries should contribute far more. Elise Ford, head of Oxfam
International's EU office, said: "Unless developing countries see hard cash on
the table, there is a real danger they will simply walk away."

The
Greenie menace at work in Australia: Water tanks help spread of dengue
fever

Because Greenies go ballistic at plans to build dams,
politicians are very slow to build them. So we have water shortages. And the
very expensive "solution" to that -- promoted by the government -- is for each
house to have its own rainwater tank. Talk about "drought" below is a coverup.
It rains every couple of days where I live -- which must be the world's
strangest "drought" -- but we still have severe restrictions on water usage and
subsidies for people to buy household tanks. But the cost of the tanks is not
the only problem:

Backyard water tanks, a key weapon for Australian
households in the battle against drought and climate change, may prove a
double-edged sword if they help the mosquito that spreads dengue fever to
penetrate deep into southern and inland Australia. Melbourne researchers who set
out to measure how much further the dengue mosquito might spread as the climate
heats up discovered that water hoarding by households was likely to prove a much
bigger help to the insect. The species responsible for spreading dengue in
Australia, Aedes aegypti, is largely confined to Townsville, Cairns and
Queensland's far north, where two outbreaks of dengue are continuing to worsen.

There have now been 198 confirmed cases of dengue fever in Cairns and 21
in Townsville, according to figures released last night. The Townsville outbreak
is particularly alarming because two of the four types of dengue are circulating
simultaneously, raising the risk that someone will suffer a potentially fatal
second infection.

Scientists from Melbourne University say climate
change and evolutionary adaptation are making more of Australia habitable for
the insect, but human behaviours may be smoothing the mosquito's path even more.
"While we predict that climate change will directly increase habitat suitability
throughout much of Australia, the potential indirect impact of changed water
storage practices by humans in response to drought may have a greater effect,"
the authors write.

Lead researcher and zoology lecturer Michael Kearney
said there had been a "dramatic increase" in domestic rainwater storage in
response to drought. "Water tanks and other water storage vessels, such as
modified wheelie bins, are potential breeding sites for this disease-bearing
mosquito," Dr Kearney said. "Without due water-storage hygiene, this indirect
effect of climate change via human adaptation could dramatically re-expand the
mosquito's range." Dr Kearney said the findings did not mean water tanks should
be avoided. Instead, it was important for householders to realise the tanks
should be properly sealed to prevent mosquito access, which meant avoiding
improvised or badly made tanks and opting for versions that met Australian
standards. "Australian-standard water tanks have brass mesh protecting the inlet
and outlet valves, which are less likely to degrade," he said.

About 100
years ago, Aedes aegypti was more widespread, being found in Darwin and Broome,
along the east coast as far south as Sydney, inland to Bourke and even in Perth.
Its range diminished through the last decades of the 20th century for reasons
not well understood, but Dr Kearney said his team's work suggested the removal
of old galvanised water tanks and installation of town water supplies may have
helped.

The invention of insecticides and even lawnmowers may also have
played a part by encouraging householders to keep gardens under better control
and to clear away discarded pots and other receptacles that could provide the
mosquito with a place to lay eggs.

Queensland Institute of Medical
Research's Tim Hurst has studied water storage in Brisbane households and how
this might affect mosquito breeding. "About 50 per cent of the houses we
surveyed have rainwater tanks, but about 30 per cent of those are collecting
water in other containers -- such as buckets and wheelie bins," he said. [You
would do that too if you were forbidden by law to water your
garden]

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Some Greenie foot-shooting

A
good comment below from Taranto:

Although America in 2000 passed up
an opportunity to elect the man who invented global warming, eight years later
we handed a decisive presidential victory to an avowed global warmist. And while
the message of Barack Obama's candidacy on this subject was a bit muddled--he
was for "change," while global warmists say they want to stop "climate"
change--there is a widespread belief that the voters handed President Obama a
mandate to "do something" about global warming. A poll released last week by the
Pew Research Center, however, calls this into question. In the New York Times's
"Dot Earth" blog, Andrew Revkin described the findings:

According to the survey of 1,503 adults, global warming, on its
own, ranks last out of 20 surveyed issues. . . . Although the more general
issue of protecting the environment ranked higher than climate (named by 41
percent of the poll subjects) that figure was 15 percentage points lower than
in the same poll a year ago.

Revkin also links to a Rasmussen
survey that finds Americans increasingly skeptical about the science behind
global warmism:

Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters now say long-term
planetary trends are the cause of global warming, compared to 41% who blame it
on human activity. . . . In July 2006, 46% of voters said global warming is
caused primarily by human activities, while 35% said it is due to long-term
planetary trends.

Why have global warmists lost ground with the
public? One obvious reason is the recession. "The economy" and "jobs" top the
Pew list of top priorities, and both have increased sharply over the past couple
of years. People who are afraid of something real--losing their jobs or the
value of their assets--have little energy left for esoteric and hypothetical
terrors.

Another reason is that it is really cold out. Past Pew surveys
were also taken in January, so that the figures can be construed as seasonally
adjusted, but this has been an especially harsh winter, which seems to provide
experiential evidence against the claims of global warmism.

Of course,
this feeling is illusory: Weather is different from climate, and it is possible
to have cold winters even amid a long-term trend toward hotter weather--just as,
for example, the stock market has down days during a bull market.

Global
warmists, however, have squandered their credibility in making this point,
because they never fail to seize on a hurricane or a sweltering summer day as
"evidence" to make their case. In fact, so cynical is the public about the
claims of global warmists that the clich‚d response to a pleasant winter day is,
"If this is global warming, bring it on."

An additional problem is that
whereas global warmists are emotionally consistent--in a constant state
of alarm, accompanied by contempt, even hatred, for those who dare ask
questions--their claims are filled with logical inconsistencies. A reader
spotted a hilarious example in this Los Angeles Times article:

Even if by some miracle of environmental activism global carbon
dioxide levels reverted to pre-industrial levels, it still would take 1,000
years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed,
scientists said Monday. The gas that is already there and the heat that has
been absorbed by the ocean will exert their effects for centuries, according
to the analysis, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Science.

Over the long haul, the warming will melt the polar icecaps
more than previously had been estimated, raising ocean levels substantially,
the report said. And changes in rainfall patterns will bring droughts
comparable to those that caused the 1930s Dust Bowl to the American Southwest,
southern Europe, northern Africa and western Australia.

"People have
imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide, the climate would go back
to normal in 100 years, 200 years," lead author Susan Solomon, a senior
scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a
telephone news conference. "That's not true." . . .

Solomon said in a
statement that absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans and release of heat
from the oceans - the one process acting to cool the Earth and the other to
warm it--will "work against each other to keep temperatures almost constant
for more than 1,000 years."

Is it absolutely crucial to the
planet's future that we curtail greenhouse gases this instant, or would it not
make any difference anyway? If the latter, what sense does it make to be
alarmed? And that last quote by Solomon is a classic head-scratcher. We're
supposed to worry that temperatures will be "almost constant for more than 1,000
years"? That's what they mean by global warming? Weather forecast for the year
3009: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Imported biofuel a threat to trees and
wildlife. Just about all Greenie policies these days are destructive in one way
or another.

AUSTRALIA is contributing directly to the widespread
destruction of tropical rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia by importing
millions of tonnes of taxpayer-subsidised biodiesel made from palm oil. Imports
of the fuel are rising, undermining the Rudd Government's $200 million
commitment to reduce deforestation in the region - a problem that globally
contributes to 20 per cent of the world's carbon emissions. The bulldozing of
rainforests to make way for palm oil plantations is also putting further
pressure on orangutans and other endangered wildlife throughout Southeast Asia.
And the Australian biofuels industry says it is struggling to compete with the
cheap imports from Asia, which are touted as an environmentally friendly
alternative to diesel.

Without action, the problem will only get worse,
with demand for biodiesel imports likely to rise sharply when NSW legislates to
introduce Australia's first biodiesel mandate - 2 per cent this year, rising to
5 per cent when sufficient supplies become available. But the Rudd Government is
likely to come under pressure to follow the lead of other Western nations in
banning imports of palm oil-based biodiesel. Biodiesel manufacturers in
Australia use primarily tallow from abattoirs and recycled cooking oil.

Caltex, the biggest biodiesel customer in Australia, refuses to use palm
oil-based fuel on environmental grounds, but it is being imported by independent
operators. Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, who is conducting a
review of government assistance to the biofuels industry, declined to comment on
whether he was aware of the Asian biodiesel imports.

Unlike imported
ethanol, imported biodiesel is not subject to the 38.14c-a-litre fuel excise, so
the biodiesel imports from Asia are effectively subsidised by Australian
taxpayers. Rex Wallace, the chief financial officer of the Adelaide-based
Environmentally Friendly Fuels, said his company had purchased five million
litres of palm oil-based biodiesel in recent years. "We would not need to import
it if people could produce a quality product on a regular basis in Australia,"
he said. "We would love to buy more local produce but it's just not there." Mr
Wallace said his company imported from certified plantations in Malaysia that
had been developed on land cleared historically for other purposes such as
rubber plantations.

Australian Biodiesel Group chief executive Bevan
Dooley said the industry estimated that 10million litres of palm oil-based
biodiesel was imported a year. "Europe and the US are closing the gates on this
product, but Australian taxpayers are subsidising its import," Mr Dooley said.
He said it was difficult to establish if certified plantations were
environmentally friendly, and Australian imports were helping to fuel demand
worldwide for "environmentally destructive" biodiesel from Malaysia and
Indonesia. "These imports are causing many Australian producers to suffer losses
and are detrimental to the establishment of a biodiesel industry in Australia,"
Mr Dooley said. "Australia is seen as a dumping ground for palm oil-based
biodiesel as there is no requirement for the fuel to be derived from sustainable
resources." He said there was ample capacity in Australia to meet demand.

The Australian industry produces about 50million litres of biodiesel a
year, but has the capacity to produce much more. About 80 million litres will be
needed annually to meet a 2 per cent mandate in NSW. Indonesia has about 6
million hectares of palm oil plantation and Malaysia 4.5 million ha. Indonesia
plans to double palm oil production by 2025 and is developing a plantation of
1.8 million ha in east Kalimantan. To make way for the plantation, the largest
remaining area of lowland rainforest in Kalimantan is being bulldozed, with the
loss of habitat for orangutans, clouded leopards and other rare
animals.

Climate change
remains at the top of President Obama's agenda, current economic woes
notwithstanding. Obama recently inveighed against energy sources that "threaten
our planet," and several of his early appointments-including Energy Secretary
Stephen Chu, science adviser John Holdren, and White House energy czar Carol
Browner-signal the importance of climate-change policy to this administration.
During the campaign, Obama endorsed an 80-percent reduction in greenhouse-gas
emissions by 2050, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hopes to move
climate-change legislation before the end of the year. California Representative
Henry Waxman's successful coup against longtime Energy and Commerce Committee
Chairman John Dingell of Michigan makes congressional action more
likely

Even were Congress to have second thoughts, the climate-policy die
is cast. In April 2007, the Supreme Court held, in Massachusetts v. EPA, that
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the authority to regulate
greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Thus no new legislation is required
for the Obama EPA to begin crafting rules to control the emission of carbon
dioxide and other gases from automobile tailpipes, power plants, boilers, and
more. Like it or not, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and her team have ample
authority to impose controls on the most ubiquitous by-product of modern
industrial civilization.

Indeed, they may not have a choice. Justice
Stevens's majority opinion in Massachusetts did not command the EPA to begin
regulating, but that is the practical effect of the Court's decision. At issue
was Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, which requires the EPA to impose emission
standards on new motor vehicles for any air pollutants which in the EPA's
"judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be
anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." The Court decided that
greenhouse gases are "air pollutants," and so the EPA must set standards if it
believes climate change "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health
or welfare."

The EPA would have a hard time claiming not to believe
that, even if the Obama administration were so inclined: In numerous documents
and statements, the agency has reiterated its belief that climate change is a
significant concern, and that a gradual warming could have deleterious effects
on health and welfare. Even during the Bush administration, the EPA endorsed
federal action to "reduce the risk" of global warming. The EPA has done
everything short of publishing a formal statement that climate change "may
reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," and no court
would readily let it off the hook. Thus, Massachusetts effectively requires the
imposition of carbon-dioxide controls on new cars and trucks.

But that's
not the only regulation affected by the Court's conclusion that greenhouse gases
are air pollutants under the act. Section 111 of the act, for instance, requires
the agency to set standards for some stationary sources of emissions "which may
reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." So if the EPA
must regulate automotive emissions under Section 202, it must regulate emissions
from power plants and factories under Section 111 as well.

And there's
more. The act requires the issuance of permits and the imposition of
technological controls on facilities that emit more than 250 tons of regulated
pollutants annually. For traditional pollutants, such as sulfur oxides, these
provisions capture only the really big emitters-large power plants and the like.
Applied to carbon dioxide, however, the 250-ton standard could encompass many
commercial and residential buildings, increasing the number of regulated
facilities tenfold, if not more.

A plain reading of the Clean Air Act
would also seem to require that the EPA set a National Ambient Air Quality
Standard (NAAQS) for carbon dioxide, and then force state pollution-control
agencies to develop plans to ensure that metropolitan areas comply. This is a
fool's errand. There is simply no way for state and local regulators to ensure
that individual cities, or even larger regions, meet an air-quality standard for
a globally dispersed atmospheric pollutant. Local emissions could be reduced to
zero, and a given city could still violate the NAAQS because of emissions
elsewhere. It would be a pointless regulatory exercise, but after Massachusetts
v. EPA it is the law.

The regulatory train thus set in motion by the
Supreme Court will move apace unless Congress stops it through legislative
action. What should such legislation look like? Some who would prefer to replace
existing Clean Air Act rules with a cap-and-trade emissions-control regime have
labored under the delusion that such a regime could be adopted by administrative
fiat. Unlikely. Last year a federal court struck down the Bush administration's
effort to create a regional cap-and-trade system for traditional air pollutants.
If the Clean Air Interstate Rule was invalid under the Clean Air Act, there is
little hope for implementing a greenhouse-gas trading system.

President Obama is moving quickly to act on the
environmental promises that were a centerpiece of his campaign. But tackling
global warming will be far more difficult - and more costly - than the new
emissions standards for automobiles he ordered with the stroke of a pen on
Monday. Already, the Congressional Democrats Mr. Obama will need to carry out
his mandate are feuding with one another.

By coincidence or design, most
of the policy makers on Capitol Hill and in the administration charged with
shaping legislation to address global warming come from California or the East
Coast, regions that lead the country in environmental regulation and the push
for renewable energy sources. That is a problem, says a group of Democratic
lawmakers from the Midwest and Plains States, which are heavily dependent on
coal and manufacturing. The lawmakers have banded together to fight legislation
they think might further damage their economies.

"There's a bias in our
Congress and government against manufacturing, or at least indifference to us,
especially on the coasts," said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. "It's
up to those of us in the Midwest to show how important manufacturing is. If we
pass a climate bill the wrong way, it will hurt American jobs and the American
economy, as more and more production jobs go to places like China, where it's
cheaper."

This brown state-green state clash is likely to encumber any
effort to set a mandatory ceiling on the carbon dioxide emissions blamed as the
biggest contributor to global warming, something Mr. Obama has declared to be
one of his highest priorities. Mr. Obama has said he intends to press ahead on
such an initiative, despite opposition within his own party in Congress and
divisions among some of his advisers over the timing, scope and cost of
legislation to curb carbon emissions.

The centrist Democrats who urge a
slower-paced approach represent states that are crucial electoral battlegrounds
and that stand to lose the most from such regulation. They say they believe that
global warming is a serious threat and they will support legislation to address
the problem - but not at the expense of their already-strained workers and
industries.

Car industry groups
are gearing up for a long fight and the likelihood of legal action against
proposals by President Barack Obama to allow California and other states to set
their own regulations on greenhouse gas emission from vehicles. Though none are
yet committing to fight the plans in court, the US Chamber of Commerce said it
was "100 per cent sure" that a challenge would be launched if the Environmental
Protection Agency gives the go-ahead to California.

Bill Kovacs,
vice-president for environment and regulatory affairs, said the Chamber was
"likely" to sue the EPA itself if lobbying and persuasion failed. "There will be
continuing controversy over this. This is not going to go away," he said. "We
will argue that this is a dangerous course of action."

A memorandum
signed by Mr Obama on Monday directed the EPA to reconsider granting California
and 13 other states waivers to set their own emission standards, after the Bush
administration had denied permission. The move was given a rapturous welcome by
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, and by
environmental groups, who assume that the EPA will grant the waiver when its
decision is announced in a few months.

Industry groups will endeavour to
find a compromise with the new administration, which is putting cleaner energy
at the heart of its agenda. However they claim that the waivers would lead to a
patchwork of regulations that will drive up costs for the industry and
ultimately the consumer in what is already a depressed market. Estimates have
said that between $1,500 and $3,000 would be added to the cost of passenger car.
Industry groups will argue that the president should stick to a strong national
emissions standard of 35 miles to the gallon by 2020 that has already been
agreed to.

"We are concerned that if states take off on their own then
the economy will be Balkanized into regulatory fiefdoms," said Hank Cox, vice
president of communications at the National Association of Manufacturers. "The
car industry is on the ropes right now. This would be economic folly of the
first order."

Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said Tuesday that it was "not
critical" for the U.S. to begin regulating power-plant emissions in advance of
renewed talks toward a global climate-change treaty. The Massachusetts Democrat
will be an influential player in efforts to forge such a treaty and reshape U.S.
policy on climate issues.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal,
Sen. Kerry said that an $825 billion economic-stimulus bill making its way
through Congress should include more money for low-carbon technologies and less
for "nontargeted tax cuts" that would, he said, do little to create jobs
quickly. "We're staring at an incredible economic opportunity," he said of the
stimulus bill, "let's spend it on the right things."

Some environmental
activists have said that the U.S. can't credibly participate in the
climate-change talks scheduled for December in Copenhagen unless it takes new
steps to reduce its own emissions, such as using the Environmental Protection
Agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate power-plant
greenhouse-gas emissions. But taking that step would risk a confrontation
between the Obama administration and major industries, as well as fellow
Democrats from coal-rich states.

Sen. Kerry said he thought it would be
"great" if the EPA regulated power companies' greenhouse-gas emissions before
the Copenhagen meetings, but that such a step was not critical. He cited
President Obama's recent directive to the EPA to consider letting states
regulate automobile greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as decisions by some
states, cities and businesses to enact voluntary emissions-reduction programs,
as evidence that the U.S. is "moving forward" on such matters. "People have to
get beyond the Bush mentality and realize it's a very different ball game" under
Mr. Obama, he said. Mr. Bush resisted committing the U.S. to economywide curbs
on greenhouse-gas emissions, whereas Mr. Obama has called for legislation to cut
U.S. emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.

Sen. Kerry planned to brief
Senate Democrats Tuesday on new scientific evidence that global greenhouse-gas
emissions are increasing at four times the rate they were in the 1990s. "It's
critical we begin now" to forge consensus on climate-change policy, he said.
"There's a great deal of evidence that we're behind the curve on where we should
be" in controlling emissions.

Sen. Kerry plans to hold a hearing
Wednesday where former Vice President Al Gore is expected to testify on the
status of United Nations-led global-warming talks. Sen. Kerry's committee, which
oversees the State Department, gives him a platform from which to influence the
U.S. negotiating position in the Copenhagen talks, which are aimed at forging a
successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that requires many industrialized
nations to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions.

The outcome of the
talks is expected to hinge on whether developing nations such as China and India
can be persuaded to commit to binding cuts in their own emissions. The
countries' refusal to do so has been a major reason why the U.S. has not
committed to similar binding cuts.

A spokesman for the Sierra Club, John
Coequyt, said Sen. Kerry appeared to be trying to lower expectations ahead of
Copenhagen, so that "if we can't get one of these things out of EPA, we can
still go ... and make a solid claim that we're acting."

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

It might upset the fish, you know. So: Coal, nuclear and
hydroelectic are positively EVIL; windmills are no good; tidal power is no good.
There's just no such thing as a happy Greenie

Whichever, if any,
tidal scheme is built on the Severn, it is sure to anger some environmentalists.
Being a renewable source of electricity, tidal generators might be assumed to be
popular with the green lobby. Yet there are serious reservations over the
environmental costs of a barrage or lagoon in the estuary - and they have split
the environmentalist movement.

On the one hand there is the appeal of
doing something positive about climate change by turning to a renewable, rather
than burnable, source of energy. Environmental activists have been urging
governments, power companies and the public to embrace renewable energy because
it is cleaner than fossil fuels and nuclear power. On the other hand, thousands
of hectares of shoreline will be destroyed as a feeding ground for birds - an
internationally important feeding ground, no less. There are also deep concerns
about the impact on the fish and invertebrates in the Severn. Barrages and, to a
lesser extent, lagoons form a physical barrier to species such as salmon and
eels as they migrate. The dilemma is balancing the potential damage to habitat
against the gains made in combating climate change.

If measures such as
the Cardiff-Weston barrage are not taken, how much of the river will be claimed
anyway by sea-level rises from melting ice caps and how many creatures will be
forced to find somewhere else to live because temperatures have become
unbearable?

Some of the projects that missed the shortlist are regarded
as having less of an impact on the environment but they are the most unproven
schemes and, however attractive their merits, their effectiveness is
questionable. When coming to their decision on tidal schemes for the Severn -
and perhaps one day the Mersey, the Wyre and the Thames - ministers will have
plenty of factors to weigh up. There will be the jobs created - the bigger the
scheme the bigger the job creation prospects - and there will be the economic
damage caused by limiting navigation of the Severn and access to upstream ports.
There will be the attraction of plumping for a huge barrage that will be a
monument to their tenure in office, to be set against the affordability of
constructing such an edifice.

But most of all they will have to judge
whether the wider environment will best be served by sacrifice or preservation.

NASA warming
scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore's closest allies in
the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his
former supervisor at NASA. Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John
S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA's vocal man-made global
warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and
declared that Hansen "embarrassed NASA" with his alarming climate claims and
said Hansen was "was never muzzled." Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of
international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming
fears.

"I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree
that global warming is man made," Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the
Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. "I was, in effect,
Hansen's supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his
resources, and evaluate his results," Theon, the former Chief of the Climate
Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the
Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.

"Hansen was never
muzzled even though he violated NASA's official agency position on climate
forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or
mankind's effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his
claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress," Theon wrote.

Theon declared "climate models are useless." "My own belief concerning
anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate
the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale
processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit," Theon
explained. "Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to
justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have
modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted
making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by
other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus
there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to
determine public policy," he added.

"As Chief of several of NASA
Headquarters' programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all
weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work
by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other
scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who
worked on climate research," Theon wrote of his career. "This required a
thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate
science since retiring by reading books and journal articles," Theon added.

No
Joke! Study predicts sea level rise for year 3000 A.D.! Get your 1000 year
forecast!

Their climate models have never predicted anything of
substance yet so they must have improved dramatically in recent times. I wonder
if the study authors do 1000 year stock market predictions as well? The study
would seem to be a classic instance of where faulty assumptions can lead you. It
is all based on the CO2 theory of warming with no mention of the sun. But
whichever way you look at it, the hubris is amazing

A new scientific
study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a
powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of
carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there's no going back. The pioneering study,
led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface
temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than
1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The
findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. "Our study convinced us that current choices regarding
carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the
planet," said Solomon, who is based at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory
in Boulder, Colo.

"It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide
emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years,"
Solomon said. "But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects
the climate system." The study examines the consequences of allowing CO2 to
build up to several different peak levels beyond present-day concentrations of
385 parts per million and then completely halting the emissions after the peak.
The authors found that the scientific evidence is strong enough to quantify some
irreversible climate impacts, including rainfall changes in certain key regions,
and global sea level rise. If CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per
million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall
that are comparable to the 1930s North American Dust Bowl in zones including
southern Europe, northern Africa, southwestern North America, southern Africa
and western Australia.....

The scientists emphasize that increases in CO2
that occur in this century "lock in" sea level rise that would slowly follow in
the next 1,000 years. Considering just the expansion of warming ocean
waters-without melting glaciers and polar ice sheets-the authors find that the
irreversible global average sea level rise by the year
3000 would be at least 1.3-3.2 feet (0.4-1.0 meter) if CO2 peaks at 600
parts per million, and double that amount if CO2 peaks at 1,000 parts per
million....

Maybe Joe Romm’s employers over at
the Center for American Progress have a vision for how his tantrums and fits
serve their interests on advancing climate policy. I certainly can’t see how his
antics do anything more than paint the CAP as a hotbed for intolerance and
ignorance. In Joe’s latest
rant he calls the NYTs Andy Revkin a climate denier, or I think he does, as
Joe speaks a language unto himself. Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):

Andy asserts:

I've been the most prominent communicator out there saying the most
established aspects of the issue of human-driven climate change lie between
the poles of catastrophe and hoax.

Following that
shockingly un-scientific statement, he includes the link to his 2007 piece, "A
New Middle Stance Emerges in Debate over Climate," that touts the views of
Roger A. Pielke Jr., of all people! The "middle stance" is apparently just the
old denier do-nothing stance with a smile, a token nod to science, and a $5 a
ton CO2 tax [which is why I call them
denier-eq's]

Joe’s strategy of tarring those who hold
reasonable views as deniers is re-enforced when he takes Revkin to task for
having the gall to discuss climate politics in his reporting:

Uhh, Andy, you're the science reporter, not the political
reporter.

Joe’s strategy is one that I explain in The Honest
Broker: by collapsing political debates onto science one can then try to impeach
the political views in terms of science. This explains Joe’s constant use of the
term “denier” which is usually a term used to impeach via Holocaust symbolism
those who don’t accept the consensus views on climate science.

Of course
the problem for Joe is that Revkin (as well as me) have always accepted the
consensus views on science. More than anyone else Revkin is probably responsible
for broadly disseminating those views via his reporting, and has been routinely
criticized by those skeptical for not taking a more skeptical view
himself.

So Romm’s attacks collapse in a heap of intellectual
incoherence. A “denier” is thus anyone whose views on the science differ from
Joe’s views (whose views on climate science are indeed unique) and thus because
his opponent’s views on science are wrong, he can then dismiss their political
views with the sweeping contempt of “denier.” Thus, because Revkin works from
the scientific consensus on climate change he is thus a “denier” or in Joe’s
special language a “denier-eq.” Thus, Joe can them proceed to impeach Andy’s
identification of a wide-ranging debate on climate policy among people who want
action. Joe would prefer that no views other than his own receive attention,
thus the frequent juvenile blog tantrums and fits.

So if the Center for
American Progress envisions Joe painting their organization into a small corner
where nuance, debate, and above all a range of views of climate policy are not
allowed, then they are succeeding beyond wildest expectations, and Romm is not
only marginalizing himself, but the institution that pays his salary.

Ice in Canada's St. Lawrence River traps
ships carrying 500, including icebreaker

Ice in the St. Lawrence
River has trapped three ships carrying a total of about 500 passengers -
including an icebreaker sent in to unblock the waterway. A cruise ship with
about 300 people on board is among the three stuck since Monday at the mouth of
the St. Lawrence River near Matane, Quebec.

Leonard Arsenault, a
spokesman for the cruise ship CTMA-Vacancier, says passengers were being
transported to the Gaspe Peninsula from Montreal for a week-long ski trip in the
Chic-Choc mountains.

A coast guard icebreaker was sent to free the
cruise ship and a freighter that was also trapped, but it got stuck in the ice.
There are about 500 people aboard the three vessels, says Arsenault.

You see why most
academics fear to identify themselves as climate realists

It is
common for Australian academics to publicly express an opinion on climate change
including in our newspapers; think Tim Flannery, Ian Lowe and more recently
Barry Brook. A couple of weeks ago Jon Jenkins, an Adjunct Professor at Bond
University, had an
opinion piece published by The Australian newspaper. The piece was critical
of the accepted dogma on anthropogenic global warming with a focus on how global
temperatures are recorded and ended with a comment on sustainable
development:

"Science is only about certainty and facts. The real question is
in acknowledging the end of fossil fuels within the next 200 years or so: how
do we spend our research time and dollars? Do we spend it on ideologically
green-inspired publicity campaigns such as emissions-trading schemes based on
the fraud of the IPCC, or do we spend it on basic science that could lead us
to energy self-sufficiency based on some combination of solar, geothermal,
nuclear and renewable sources? The alternative is to go back to the stone
age."

Interestingly Bond University has a new name for its
business and IT faculties, The Faculty of Business, Technology & Sustainable
Development, but apparently didn't like Professor Jenkins' very public opinion
on the subject of sustainable development. For his opinion, Professor Jenkins
received an official reprimand from the Bond University Registrar and then was
informed last Friday that his adjunct status had been revoked. No doubt he has
contravened some rule or other at the University and no doubt this would have
gone unnoticed if Professor Jenkins had a more popular opinion on these most
politically charged subjects.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

HEH! EU TO PRESSURE OBAMA TO COME UP WITH
CLIMATE BILLIONS FOR CHINA AND INDIA

Eager to take the lead on
climate change, the European Union aims to pile pressure on the United States
and big emerging countries to sign up to an ambitious strategy to reduce
greenhouse gases. Last month European leaders approved an ambitious climate
change action plan which the 27-nation bloc hopes will become a model for
international negotiations in Copenhagen in December. "We will do everything to
make (Copehagen) a success," European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso told
reporters on Friday. "The problem is to know whether the others are ready to do
what we have been doing."

The European Commission is to unveil on
Wednesday a strategy for gradually ramping up investments aimed at tackling
climate change to a target of 175 billion euros per year by 2020, including 30
billion euros to help poor countries. Developed countries would be expected to
contribute 95 billion euros to the plan. Among the sources of finance, the
commission recommends making polluters pay for each tonne of carbon dioxide that
they emit. With a price starting at one euro per tonne rising gradually to three
euros, the plan would generate about 13 billion euros in 2013 if used in the
main developed countries, rising to 28 billion euros by 2020.

In the
same strategy paper, obtained by AFP, the commission lays out 200 actions that
are not expected to bear a prohibitive cost for reducing carbon dioxide, the
main greenhouse gas. The measures, which target the energy, agriculture and
forestry sectors, would save 39 billion tonnes of CO2 from escaping into the
atmosphere by 2020 at a cost of between four to 10 euros per tonne.

EU
leaders committed last month to a climate-energy package that would decrease the
bloc's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, make 20 percent energy
savings and bring renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of total energy use.
With four billion tonnes of CO2 a year, the EU generates 14 percent of the 27
billion tonnes that escape into the atmosphere each year. The United States is
the biggest polluter with 5.8 billion tonnes, followed by China with 5.1 billion
tonnes. The EU hopes that it can rally other major polluters behind its
approach. "I think the most important issue for Copenhagen in terms of
preparation is to have the Americans on board and afterwards the biggest
emerging economies China, India, and Brazil," Barroso said.

Do we care more about one dead elephant
than we do for a hundred black children?

By Bjorn Lomborg

Barack Obama in his inaugural speech promised to "roll back the spectre
of a warming planet." In this context, it is worth contemplating a passage from
his book Dreams from My Father. It reveals a lot about the way we view the
world's problems.

Obama is in Kenya and wants to go on a safari. His
Kenyan sister Auma chides him for behaving like a neo-colonialist. "Why should
all that land be set aside for tourists when it could be used for farming? These
wazungu care more about one dead elephant than they do for a hundred black
children."

Although he ends up going on safari, Obama has no answer to
her question. That anecdote has parallels with the current preoccupation with
global warming. Many people - including America's new President - believe that
global warming is the pre-eminent issue of our time, and that cutting CO2
emissions is one of the most virtuous things we can do. To stretch the metaphor
a little, this seems like building ever-larger safari parks instead of creating
more farms to feed the hungry.

Make no mistake: global warming is real,
and it is caused by manmade CO2 emissions. The problem is that even global,
draconian, and hugely costly CO2 reductions will have virtually no impact on the
temperature by mid-century.

Instead of ineffective and costly cuts, we
should focus much more of our good climate intentions on dramatic increases in
R&D for zero-carbon energy, which would fix the climate towards mid-century
at low cost. But, more importantly for most of the planet's citizens, global
warming simply exacerbates existing problems.

Consider malaria. Models
shows global warming will increase the incidence of malaria by about 3% by the
end of the century, because mosquitoes are more likely to survive when the world
gets hotter. But malaria is much more strongly related to health infrastructure
and general wealth than it is to temperature. Rich people rarely contract
malaria or die from it; poor people do. Strong carbon cuts could avert about
0.2% of the malaria incidence in a hundred years. The other option is simply to
prioritise eradication of malaria today. It would be relatively cheap and
simple, involving expanded distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, more
preventive treatment for pregnant women, increased use of the maligned pesticide
DDT, and support for poor nations that cannot afford the best new therapies.

Tackling nearly 100% of today's malaria problem would cost just
one-sixtieth of the price of the Kyoto Protocol. Put another way, for each
person saved from malaria by cutting CO2 emissions, direct malaria policies
could have saved 36,000. Of course, carbon cuts are not designed only to tackle
malaria. But, for every problem that global warming will exacerbate -
hurricanes, hunger, flooding - we could achieve tremendously more through
cheaper, direct policies today.

For example, adequately maintained
levees and better evacuation services, not lower carbon emissions, would have
minimised the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.

During the 2004 hurricane season, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, both
occupying the same island, provided a powerful lesson. In the Dominican
Republic, which has invested in hurricane shelters and emergency evacuation
networks, the death toll was fewer than ten. In Haiti, which lacks such
policies, 2,000 died. Haitians were a hundred times more likely to die in an
equivalent storm than Dominicans.

Obama's election has raised hopes for
a massive commitment to carbon cuts and vast spending on renewable energy to
save the world - especially developing nations. As Obama's Kenyan sister might
attest, this could be an expensive indulgence. Some believe Obama should follow
the lead of the European Union, which has committed itself to the goal of
cutting carbon emissions by 20% below 1990 levels within 12 years by using
renewable energy. This alone will probably cost more than 1% of GDP. Even if the
entire world followed suit, the net effect would be to reduce global
temperatures by one-twentieth of one degree Fahrenheit by the end of the
century. The cost could be a staggering $10 trillion.

Most economic
models show that the total damage imposed by global warming by the end of the
century will be about 3% of GDP. This is not trivial, but nor is it the end of
the world. By the end of the century, the United Nations expects the average
person to be 1,400% richer than today. An African safari trip once confronted
America's new president with a question he could not answer: why the rich world
prized elephants over African children. Today's version of that question is: why
will richer nations spend obscene amounts of money on climate change, achieving
next to nothing in 100 years, when we could do so much good for mankind today
for much less money? The world will be watching to hear Obama's answer.

On Thursday,
German economy minister Michael Glos was expressing "serious misgivings" about
the EU's emissions trading scheme, complaining that it could cost jobs if it
went ahead in its current form. His own scientific advisory board is urging the
repeal of strict limits for CO2 emissions, and an easing of the system in order
to stabilise the price of permits.

This may or may not be connected with
an announcement yesterday that the German energy giant RWE has decided to build
no more new power plants in western Europe, as the EU's emissions trading scheme
has rendered new projects "unprofitable". "We will go ahead with power-plants
which we are already planning or which are already under construction," said
Johannes Lambertz, chief executive of RWE's power unit. "Further projects are on
hold until they become economical."

Lambertz adds that, "The current
framework leads to a situation where it can be more economical to continue
operating old power plants than to build new ones and then having to bear the
costs for the construction and the emission certificates."

Connection or not, it looks like the
Germans are set for a confrontation with the EU over "climate change", a dust-up
which is potentially even more attractive than the one pictured. I tell you, its
obsession with "climate change" is going to be the undoing of the EU. The
electricity riots of 2015 are going to make this look like a Sunday school
outing.

The state of California and the
automobile industry are pressing the Obama administration to decide whether
states may impose their own limits on autos' greenhouse-gas emissions, an issue
that pits President Barack Obama's allies in the labor and environmental
movements against one another. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama's first full day in
office, California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally asked the
president to let California enforce a 2002 state law that its officials estimate
would require that vehicles achieve the equivalent of 35 miles per gallon of
gasoline by 2017 -- three years earlier than a 2007 federal law would require.

The California standard doesn't set a mileage target, but rather a
target for auto makers to cut new vehicles' greenhouse-gas emissions by 30% from
2002 levels. Gearing up to fight California's request is the National Automobile
Dealers Association, which is holding its annual convention this weekend in New
Orleans, an event expected to draw 25,000 attendees and feature appearances by
former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The group has prepared a
report warning that the California law would impose "a costly and unnecessary
burden on an industry already reeling" from the worst year of U.S. vehicle sales
in more than a decade.

Mr. Obama expressed support during his campaign
for California's bid to regulate auto greenhouse-gas emissions, so called
because they trap the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere, thus contributing to
global warming. But he has avoided saying publicly how quickly his
administration intends to act on the state's request. In addition to the
question of whether to let states regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, Mr. Obama's
administration is bound by a 2007 Supreme Court decision to determine whether
greenhouse-gas emissions "endanger" public health or welfare, the legal trigger
for regulating them under the federal Clean Air Act.

Technically, both
decisions will fall to the new administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency, Lisa Jackson. Ms. Jackson supported an effort to adopt an emissions law
modeled on California's when she headed New Jersey's environmental agency from
2006 until 2008. In confirmation hearings for the EPA post, Ms. Jackson avoided
making a commitment to grant California's latest request. At a Senate hearing
last week, however, she promised to immediately revisit a decision made in
December 2007 by the agency's previous chief, Stephen Johnson, that blocked
California from implementing its law. She said she would base her final decision
on "science and the rule of law" and advice from EPA staffers, many of whom
privately counseled Mr. Johnson to grant the request. "We think they [EPA
officials] ought to be able to get it done in four months," Mary Nichols,
chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, said in an interview Thursday
when asked how quickly she expected a decision on California's request.

A
decision in favor of the request would clear the way for more than a dozen other
states to enforce laws they modeled on California's. But it also would risk
antagonizing the United Auto Workers, which has complained that the law unfairly
discriminates against companies whose product mix is skewed toward pickup
trucks, sport-utility vehicles and minivans -- which guzzle a lot of gas. A
spokesman for the union, which helped Mr. Obama clinch Ohio and Michigan in last
fall's presidential contest, didn't respond to requests for comment on
California's request.

"Even if there's a will to reverse course quickly,
the reality is that taking the time to [get] the process right will be critical
to whether any reversal is defensible in court," said Roger Martella, who was
the EPA's general counsel during the Bush administration. Ms. Nichols, the
California regulator, said her agency supports allowing public comment on the
issue. "We feel strongly that under its new leadership, EPA will recognize that
the decision made by the former administrator ... was flawed, factually and
legally, in fundamental ways," she said.

THE
recent report in the journal Nature of an unexpected Antarctic warming trend has
created a certain amount of skepticism - even among supporters of AGW. [1] But
in an AP news story, two of its authors (one is 'hockey-stick' inventor Michael
Mann from the Real Climate blog) argue that this refutes the skeptics and is
"consistent with" greenhouse warming. Of course, as Roger Pielke, Jr, points
out, not long ago we learned from Real Climate that a cooling Antarctica was
'consistent with' greenhouse warming and thus the skeptics were wrong: " So a warming Antarctica and a cooling Antarctica are both
'consistent with' model projections of global warming.

Our foray
into the tortured logic of 'consistent with' in climate science raises the
perennial question, what observations of the climate system would be
inconsistent with the model predictions?" The results are based on very few
isolated data from weather stations, plus data from research satellites. And
here is the rub: these are not data from microwave sounding units (MSU), such as
are regularly published by Christy and Spencer, but data from infrared sensors
that are supposed to measure the temperature of the surface (rather than of the
overlaying atmosphere, as weather stations do).

But the IR emission
depends not only on temperature of the surface, but also on surface emissivity -
and is further modified by absorption of clouds and haze. These are all
difficult points. Emissivity of snow depends on its porosity and size of snow
crystals. Blowing snow likely has a different emissivity than snow that has been
tamped down; so surface winds could have a strong influence. The emissivity of
ice is again different and will depend on whether there is a thin melt layer of
water on top of the ice, temporarily produced by solar radiation.

Finally, we have temperature inversions that can trap haze which is
essentially undetectable by optical methods from satellites. The proof of the
pudding, of course, is the MSU data, which show a continuous cooling trend, are
little affected by surface conditions and are unaffected by haze and clouds.
They are therefore more reliable.

Bottom line: As it looks to me right
now, the Antarctic Continent is cooling not warming.

In this week's Science
magazine, science writer Richard Kerr reports on some of the goings-on at this
past December's annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. While he
didn't cover our presentation at the meeting in which we described our efforts
at creating a reconstruction of ice melt across Greenland dating back into the
late 1700s (we found that the greatest period of ice melt occurred in the
decades around the 1930s), Kerr did cover some other recent findings concerning
the workings of Greenland's cryosphere in his article titled "Galloping
Glaciers of Greenland Have Reined Themselves In". Here is how Kerr starts
things off:

"Things were looking bad around southeast Greenland a few
years ago. There, the streams of ice flowing from the great ice sheet into the
sea had begun speeding up in the late 1990s. Then, two of the biggest Greenland
outlet glaciers really took off, and losses from the ice to the sea eventually
doubled. Some climatologists speculated that global warming might have pushed
Greenland past a tipping point into a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice
loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level."

And some non-climatologists
speculated disaster from rapidly rising seas as well. During his An Inconvenient
Truth tour, Gore was fond of spinning the following tale:

"[E]arlier
this year [2006], yet another team of scientists reported that the previous
twelve months saw 32 glacial earthquakes on Greenland between 4.6 and 5.1 on the
Richter scale - a disturbing sign that a massive destabilization may now be
underway deep within the second largest accumulation of ice on the planet,
enough ice to raise sea level 20 feet worldwide if it broke up and slipped into
the sea. Each passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a
planetary emergency - a climate crisis that demands immediate action to sharply
reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to turn down the earth's
thermostat and avert catastrophe."

Oh how things have changed in the
past 2 years. For one, the "team of scientists" that reported on the Greenland
earthquakes now think that the earthquakes were the result of processes involved
with glacial calving, rather than something "underway deep within the second
largest accumulation of ice on the planet" (Nettles et al., 2008). For another,
Gore's "massive destabilization" mechanism for which the earthquakes were a
supposed bellwether (meltwater lubrication of the flow channel) has been shown
to be ineffective at producing long-term changes in glacier flow rate (e.g.
(Joughin et al., 2008; van de Wal et al., 2008). And for still another, the
recent speed-up of Greenland's glaciers has even more recently slowed down. Here
is how Kerr describes the situation:

"So much for Greenland ice's
Armageddon. "It has come to an end," glaciologist Tavi Murray of Swansea
University in the United Kingdom said during a session at the meeting. "There
seems to have been a synchronous switch-off" of the speed-up, she said. Nearly
everywhere around southeast Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the
levels of 2000. An increasingly warmer climate will no doubt eat away at the
Greenland ice sheet for centuries, glaciologists say, but no one should be
extrapolating the ice's recent wild behavior into the future."

The last
point is driven home by new results published last week (and described in our
last WCR and in our piece over at MasterResource) by researchers Faezeh Nick and
colleagues. They modeled the flow of one of Greenland's largest glaciers and
determined that while glaciers were quite sensitive to changing conditions at
their calving terminus, that they responded rather quickly to them and the
increase in flow rate was rather short lived. Nick et al. included these words
of warning: "Our results imply that the recent rates of mass loss in Greenland's
outlet glaciers are transient and should not be extrapolated into the future."

All told, it is looking more like the IPCC's estimates of a few inches
of sea level rise from Greenland during the 21st century aren't going to be that
far off-despite loud protestations to the contrary from high profile alarm
pullers. Maybe Gore will go back and remove the 12 pages worth of picture and
maps from his book showing what high profile places of the world will look like
with a 20-foot sea level rise ("The site of the World Trade Center Memorial
would be underwater"). But then again, probably not-after all the point is not
to be truthful in the sense of reflecting a likely possibility, but to scare you
into a particular course of action.

Monday, January 26, 2009

A climate change reality check

One
year ago, I believed that man-made global warming was true, with temperatures
rising dangerously due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our
atmosphere. I also believed that a consensus of the international scientific
community supported these conclusions. I based these beliefs on information from
the popular press, television and political leaders.

Then I began some
real research on the topic. I quickly discovered three critical
things:

First, the Earth has experienced significant warming over the
past 18,000 years that has nothing to do with human activity.

Second,
more recent temperature variations demonstrate that there is little or no
correlation between levels of atmospheric CO2 and temperature.

And third,
there is no "consensus" among scientists on climate change.

To understand
the science of climate change, you must first know that very accurate historic
temperature data going back thousands of years are available through analysis of
dead corals in ocean sediments as well as ice cores from Greenland and
Antarctica.

You must also understand what the Earth was like 18,000 years
ago. Back then, our planet was at the peak of its most recent major ice age. At
18 degrees Celsius, average ocean surface temperatures were 5 degrees lower than
they are today. Half of North America and Eurasia were covered by massive ice
sheets thousands of feet thick and sea level was more than 400 feet lower than
today. Then, the Earth began a dramatic warming and the ice age
ended.

The increase in the Earth's temperatures over 18,000 years has not
been steady. In just the past 1,000 years, average ocean surface temperatures
have fluctuated between 22 degrees C and 25 degrees C. Today the average
temperature is 23.

Nine-hundred years ago, when CO2 levels were lower
than today, global temperatures reached what is called the "medieval temperature
maximum." The world was warmer than today. Sea surface temperatures were 24
degrees C and the southern tip of Greenland, which had been settled by Vikings,
was actually green and habitable with a European agricultural lifestyle.
Unfortunately for the residents of Greenland, temperatures soon began to
fall.

The Earth reached the depth of what historians call the "Little Ice
Age" in about 1600 with an average ocean surface water temperature of 22 degrees
C. With no help from humans, global temperatures rose significantly from 1600 to
1900.

It is true that the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere have been
rising over the past hundred years as global society has industrialized. But
increased CO2 stimulates increased plant and tree growth. And there are many
natural ways CO2 is created, including by the breathing of humans and
animals.

CO2 is essential to life and feedback loops are complex.
Further, temperatures have not risen in correlation with the increase in CO2.
Global temperatures actually decreased between 1940 and 1975, increased from
1976 through 1998 and remained relatively unchanged between 1998 and
2006.

Since 2006, temperatures have declined. This year record snowfall
and low temperatures are being reported all over the world, from the Americas
through Asia to Europe. In just a few examples, this winter the European nation
of Slovenia set a record low temperature of minus 49 degrees C and travel in
Madrid was hindered by the deepest snowfall in years. Record snowfall and winter
storms have forced Minnesota officials to cancel an annual dog-sled race and
closed schools and roads in Las Vegas. Even Malibu, Calif., and Houston, Texas,
have experienced rare snowfall this winter. Lower temperatures have also led to
an expansion in Alaska's glaciers.

Once you look beyond the political
beliefs of the man-made global warming or climate change movement, the
scientific truth is that there is no evidence of a correlation between
atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels.

The idea that there is a
"consensus" among scientists supporting man-made global warming also is plainly
untrue. According to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Minority Staff Report released this winter, "more than 650 international
scientists" who are considered experts in the atmosphere disagree with the
global warming theory. This is 12 times the number of scientists who authored
the pro-global warming "United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
2007 Summary for Policymakers."

While no correlation has been
demonstrated between CO2 levels and temperature, early data do suggest a strong
correlation between changes in surface activity on the sun (sunspots) and
temperatures on Earth. So, it might be that the same forces that have guided the
changes in Earth's atmosphere for eternity are still at work and still beyond
human control.

Despite the science, many who advocate dramatic,
state-dictated changes in our economy to reduce carbon levels view man-made
global warming as "sacrosanct" -- an indisputable, dogmatic fact. As we debate
climate change legislation -- which would have negative economic effects on all
of us -- it is time to move beyond belief to scientific understanding.

Hansen concedes 'trying to influence the
nature of the measurements obtained'

Who is GISS anyway? GISS is a
part of NASA and stands for Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It makes sense
that this is a part of NASA. What DOESN'T make sense is why a space agency is
using surface mounted weather stations for evidence of climate
change.

Another thing of interest about GISS is who the CEO is - Dr James
Hansen, author and speaker with an alarmist approach to the climate change/
global warming argument. It is usual for people who are government employees to
keep their political opinions to themselves, or at least to comment anonymously
so that it cannot be attributed to the government agency they work for. Dr
Hansen is a very vocal exception to this rule.

Government employees are
meant to be apolitical. They are supposed to do their jobs to the best of their
abilities and give impartial advice regardless of who is in Government. This is
his background copied from the official NASA GISS web page:

Research Interests:

As a college student in Iowa, I was
attracted to science and research by James Van Allen's space science program
in the physics and astronomy department. Since then, it only took me a decade
or so to realize that the most exciting planetary research involves trying to
understand the climate change on earth that will result from anthropogenic
changes of the atmospheric composition.

One of my research interests is
radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially interpreting remote
sounding of the earth's atmosphere and surface from satellites. Such data,
appropriately analyzed, may provide one of our most effective ways to monitor
and study global change on the earth. The hardest part is trying to influence
the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be
obtained.

I am also interested in the development and application of
global numerical models for the purpose of understanding current climate
trends and projecting humans' potential impacts on climate. The scientific
excitement in comparing theory with data, and developing some understanding of
global changes that are occurring, is what makes all the other stuff worth
it.

He actually says, in the second paragraph, "The hardest part
is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key
information can be obtained." To me this sounds like spin for "The hardest part
is making the numbers show what I want them to". Let's see how long it takes for
that sentence in the NASA GISS website to get changed

Barack Obama campaigned for the White House on a promise he'd
deliver "change you can believe in." And the popular totals suggest that 52% of
voters believed indeed. But according to a recent Rasmussen Poll, there's one
change that only 41% of Americans can believe in - manmade climate change.
That's down from 47% just nine months ago, and before moving the country down an
unpopular green-paved road to disaster, the "unity" promising freshman president
would be well advised to understand why.

For starters, the rapidly
expanding number of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) dissenting international
scientists, many rising from within the alarmists' own ranks, has thoroughly
shredded the misleading fallacy of "consensus." And a full decade sans warming
and concluding with pronounced cooling despite ever-rising atmospheric CO2
levels has left Green House Gas (GHG) force-feeders with frosty egg on their
faces. Remember the sea ice that doomsters warned would soon be gone? It's now
at the very same level it was in 1979. And the sea level rise of 3.1 mm/year the
IPCC declared took place between 1993 and 2003 -- purportedly as sea ice melted
-- decreased by 20% to 2.5 mm/year in the five years that followed. That
historically natural, centuries-long gradual creep falls a tad short of
portending Al Gore's 20 foot tall civilization changing soaker.

We can't
even believe in "official" measurements, as data sets relied upon to track
global temperatures have again been shown to be contaminated and otherwise
compromised in an effort to heighten public hysteria. Ironically, to a populace
once confused by the mass media's heat hyping, clarity came not from scientific
debate, nor CO2 concentration, nor bad data nor even ice and sea levels -- but
rather from cold reality.

Record low temperatures and snowfall have
caused misery everywhere from Slovenia (-49øC) to Sioux City (-20øF), and that's
real change real people can believe in. Is it any wonder then that warnings of a
coming ice age and forecasts of immediate sustained climatic cooling suddenly
ring more plausible than those of a scorched and marginally inhabitable Roger
Cormanesque planet laughably besieged by giant man-eating snakes, bubonic plague
and even ravenous cannibals? Or that Thursday's Pew Research Center poll ranked
global warming dead last in a list of 20 issues Americans want the new
administration to focus on? Dead last!

Tough break for Liberal policy
makers -- what with recent elections and political appointments breathing new
hope into their lifelong dreams of commerce and lifestyle-dictating legislation
and regulation, only to be dashed by the unpredictability of the very force they
averred to predict.

So we're seeing the offense from the now
defense-playing alarmists accelerate and intensify, for fear that as current
cooling trends continue, the percentage of those blindly believing will plunge
precipitously. Their bluff called, they are, in effect, "all-in" and must now
play the hand they have dealt themselves -- and the world -- or admit to their
chicanery. That's why newly installed House Energy and Commerce Committee
Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) didn't even wait for Inauguration Day to announce
that "Comprehensive global warming legislation will be sent to the House floor
by Memorial Day." With the clock running down, it's all hysterical hands on
deck.

"It's always a little bit difficult to talk about global warming
when you're gonna have the coldest day of the year. But you have to realize
that weather isn't abolished just because there's a long-term trend in the
climate."

Sounds almost reasonable -- particularly given the
source. But marvel not, for around that same time last week, his colleague (and
our antihero) James Hansen made the hysterical declaration that "President
Obama's administration is the last chance to avoid flooded cities, species
extinction and climate catastrophe."

Now that's the GISS we've come to
know and instinctively distrust. Sure, a prolonged record global freeze is by no
means evidence of cooling -- but every rainfall, hurricane, drought, tsunami and
heat-wave are irrefutable proof of manmade warming. This comes from the same
agency that, in 2007, predicted "a record global temperature" to be expected
"within the next 2-3 years." Nice call -- the following year turned out to be
the coldest in a decade. But Hansen's boys are nothing if not belligerent.
Despite last year's freeze, they are sticking to their overheated guns and are
now predicting that "a new global temperature record will be set within the next
1-2 years." That sure satisfies any concerns whether the 400 million dollars
plus the House Democrats' economic stimulus plan would pump into NASA climate
change research programs will be money well spent.

On the same day Schmidt was dispatched as damage control, a
Huffpo piece complained that a Google blog search for 2008 items using the terms
"global warming" + lie, "global warming" + hoax, "global warming" + alarmists
and "global warming" + skeptic returns twice the results as those for 2007. The
author faulted the results of the Rasmussen Poll on this: "the internet is now a
larger source of news for people than newspapers." So who was this criticizing
the availability of uncensored on-line information? Why, none other than Kevin
Grandia, Managing Editor of alarmist propaganda site DeSmogBlog. Grandia claims
that "the internet is exploding" with information that "the majority of the
mainstream media is unwilling to cover." And truer words he's seldom
spoken.

But then he describes that thankfully obtainable insight as "the
nonsensical junk science of the right-wing think tanks and their cadre of
scientists for hire." And as do all cooling deniers, he cites as skeptic-damning
authority the debunked agenda-driven reports from the "top climate scientists
from around the world " of the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) that "global warming is `very likely' -- or 90 per cent
certain--caused by humans burning fossil fuels."

This is the same U.N.
globaloney espoused by Media Matters for America in its recent attacks on Lou
Dobbs, beginning on December 18th when Heartland Institute senior fellow and
science director Jay Lehr told the CNN anchor that "'[t]he last 10 years have
been quite cool' and that `the sun' -- rather than humans -- is responsible for
recent climate change." An enraged MM insisted that the IPCC 2007 Synthesis
Report "specifically rebuts the suggestion that the sun, rather than humans, is
responsible for climate change."

In the weeks that followed, MM quoted
the same report as gospel twice more. Once when rare bird Hollywood-conservative
Douglas Urbanski rightly proclaimed that "there is no evidence that there is
man-made climate change occurring." And again when Dobbs "questioned the impact
of humans on global warming and suggested that solar activity may be far more
responsible for global warming" during his January 5th show.

And yet,
this IPCC report, much-hyped-and-hallowed by alarmists and media-drones alike,
represents the combined work of only 52 carefully cherry-picked UN scientists.
But the 231-page U.S. Senate Minority Report containing the IPCC-countering
findings of more than 12 times that number (over 650 dissenting -- including
many current and former UN IPCC -- scientists) is either gratuitously ridiculed
or all but ignored by these same agents. And last year's Manhattan Declaration
was similarly impressive in its signatories, and similarly mistreated by
alarmists and their hand-puppets throughout the green-entranced
MSM.

Grandia refers to a "cadre of scientists for hire" and Al Gore and
Gorebots the likes of IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri refer to dissenting
experts as flat-Earthers and variants of big-oil whores and label their views
"outside the scientific consensus."

When in fact, even were consensus a
foundation of science, there exists infinitely more that Al Gore, James Hansen,
Gavin Schmidt, Joe Romm, Kevin Grandia et al are snake-oil salesmen than of any
anthropogenic impact on climate. And recent claims of a vaguely worded on-line
survey with a 30% response rate from unnamed "scientists" being touted by the
alarmists as proof otherwise change nothing. So 59% of Americans aren't buying
it; climate experts across the globe aren't behind it; yet the alarmists
continue to sell it and Democratic politicians remain steady
customers.

All The President's Men (and Women) of Science

Indeed,
whether born of ignorance, denial, or just political corner-painting, our new
president continues to position fossil-fuel induced warming high on the list of
immediate challenges he'll tackle, even when speaking in single-digit wind-chill
locales, as he did last Saturday in Philadelphia. And that was just days after
new E.P.A. chief Lisa Jackson avowed that "If confirmed, I will serve with
science as my guide," and the very day after Interior secretary Sen. Ken Salazar
(D-CO) promised to "put science first" in department
decision-making.

Outstanding.

Jackson -- who testified at her
confirmation hearing that "curbing global warming" would be an E.P.A. priority
-- has yet to disclose whether she'd move to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air
Act, an extremely dangerous possibility nonetheless provided in 2007 by the
wrongly decided Supreme Court decision of Massachusetts v. EPA. But as a
committed GHG hypochondriac and avid supporter of cap-and-trade -- serving "as
Vice President of the Executive Board of the Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative," which has already launched the nation's first carbon trading
system, her trump card -- should legislation fail -- is a no-brainer. And such
radical regulation would empower unelected bureaucrats to impose massive
behavior-modifying fines upon a broad range of residential and commercial
"polluters."

Meanwhile, Salazar remains vague about further acting upon
the remarkably bad decision to include global warming as an Endangered Species
Act concern, stating that "it is something that we will take a look at." But
look out -- immediately upon taking office on Tuesday, Obama halted progress on
a Bush-installed revision that would wisely "block the law from being used to
fight global warming." As we've pointed out in the past, the convergence of CO2
declared a greenhouse "pollutant" and animals listed as endangered by "climate
change" creates a virtually unlimited potential for federal control over all
manners of commerce and day-to-day existence.

Science first? My ice cold
butt!

And speaking of furthering government control, Carol M. Browner --
Obama's choice for the new inanely-named position of "global warming czar" -- is
a dyed-in-the-wool socialist. She's one of 14 leaders of Socialist
International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which, according to
the Washington Times, "calls for `global governance' and says rich countries
must shrink their economies to address climate change." For more on the
eco-Marxism scam, see Noel Sheppard's NASA's Hansen to Obama: Use Global Warming
to Redistribute Wealth and my own The Climate Alarmist Manifesto. Then there's
new energy secretary Steven Chu, another cap-and-trade champion, who declared at
his confirmation hearing:

"Climate change is a growing and pressing problem. It is now clear
that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic
disruptive changes to our climate in the lifetimes of our children and our
grandchildren."

And let's not forget Obama's director of the
Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Boston Globe recently reminded us
of John Holdren's own "contempt for researchers who are unconvinced that human
activity is responsible for global warming, or that global warming is an
onrushing disaster," calling their ideas which "infest" public discourse
"dangerous," and that "paying any attention to their views is `a menace.'"
Holdren also "contributed to a published assault on Bjorn Lomborg's notable 2001
book `The Skeptical Environmentalist'- an attack the Economist described as
`strong on contempt and sneering, but weak on substance.'"

Card-carrying
carbochondriacs -- the lot: Unwavering advocates of a scheme proven both wholly
ineffectual in GHG abatement and clearly antithetical to our essential economic
recovery by its international precursors. And Americans are waking up to the
fact that the green power they and those driving them desire derives not from
infeasible wind, solar or geothermal sources, but rather from economic command
and control.

It's obvious that were they pure of motive, green
ideologues could stick to tangibles like clean water and air, and breaking
OPEC's strategically-dangerous strangle-hold on our energy supply; even limited
intangibles like peak-oil and ambiguous "green jobs" -- and people could still
believe. So why sully the believable with the unbelievable, particularly when
the goals are supposedly identical?

And by the way, Obama's inaugural
pledge to "restore science to its rightful place" wasn't alone in its
incongruity on the subject. He also promised that the era of "protecting narrow
interests" is over, reinforcing his campaign pledge that his administration
"would not be beholden to special interests." But in fact, the green lobby
represents perhaps the broadest and most dangerous of all influence peddlers --
those who literally want to micromanage not only the air we breathe and the food
we eat, but also our homes, our businesses, our pastimes and even our vacation
spots - not to mention what, how often and how far we drive or fly in shuttling
between them.

Current polls affirm that despite a protracted and intense
campaign of misinformation and dissent-gagging, Americans now want the debate Al
Gore once declared over to actually begin. And they want it free of the
mind-policing tactics advocated by Obama's science director, and long before any
action is taken by climate zealots in either his cabinet or
Congress.

Later in Tuesday's speech, the president swore to "restore the
vital trust between people and their government." That was right before he
promised the freezing crowd he'd "roll back the specter of a warming planet." Of
course -- until he and his appointees take stock of the facts regarding the
latter, there's little hope of success in the former.

The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across
an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany
contribute to saving the climate - while putting lucrative "carbon credits" into
the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do
nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500
people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and
farmland. "Nobody asked if we wanted to move," said a 38-year-old man whose
family lost a small brick house. "The government just posted a notice that said,
'Your home will be demolished.'"

The dam will shortchange German
consumers, Chinese villagers and the climate itself, if critics are right. And
Xiaoxi is not alone. Similar stories are repeated across China and elsewhere
around the world, as hundreds of hydro projects line up for carbon credits, at a
potential cost of billions to Europeans, Japanese and soon perhaps Americans, in
a trading system a new U.S. government review concludes has "uncertain effects"
on greenhouse-gas emissions.

One American expert is more blunt. "The CDM"
- the 4-year-old, U.N.-managed Clean Development Mechanism - "is an excessive
subsidy that represents a massive waste of developed world resources," says
Stanford University's Michael Wara.

Forced relocations have become common
in China as people in hundreds of communities are moved to clear land for
factories and other projects, provoking anger and occasionally violent protests.
But what happened here is unusual in highlighting not just the human costs, but
also the awkward fit between China's authoritarian system, in which complaints
of official abuse abound, and Western environmental ideals.

Those ideals
produced the Clean Development Mechanism as a market-based tool under the Kyoto
Protocol, the 1997 agreement to combat climate change. The CDM allows industrial
nations, required by Kyoto to reduce emissions of gases blamed for global
warming, to comply by paying developing nations to cut their emissions instead.
Companies thousands of miles away, such as Germany's coal-burning, carbon
dioxide-spewing RWE electric utility, accomplish this by buying carbon credits
the U.N. issues to clean-energy projects like Xiaoxi's. The proceeds are meant
to make such projects more financially feasible. As critics point out, however,
if those projects were going to be built anyway, the climate doesn't gain, but
loses.

Such projects "may allow covered entities" - such as RWE - "to
increase their emissions without a corresponding reduction in a developing
country," the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its December
review. The system's defenders call it essential for hard-pressed industrialized
nations to meet their Kyoto quotas, and say the CDM's standards are being
tightened. "It's not as if we're printing money in a garage," Yvo de Boer, U.N.
climate chief, said of the credits. "Lots of legitimate questions are being
asked," he acknowledged to The Associated Press, but "that's why I'm happy we
have a transparent process."

That transparency - online project documents
and a U.N. database - allowed the AP to analyze in detail this exploding market,
which attracts projects ranging from small solar-power efforts in Africa, to
emissions controls on giant chemical plants in India and China. The AP has found
that hydroelectric projects, whose climate impact is most widely questioned,
have quickly become the No. 1 technology in the CDM, and China in particular is
rushing in to capitalize. The Chinese now have at least 763 hydro projects in
the CDM approval pipeline and are adding an average of 25 a month. By 2012,
those projects alone are expected to generate more than 300 million "certified
emission reductions," each supposedly representing reduction of one ton of
carbon dioxide. Even at recent depressed market prices, those credits would be
worth $4 billion.

If the United States enters the Kyoto system, as
proposed by President-elect Barack Obama, it would be the biggest player in a
market expected to be worth hundreds of billions a year by 2030....

The
CDM money has spawned an industry of consultants who help Chinese companies
assemble bids for emissions credits, and of U.N.-certified "validators," firms
that then attest that projects meet U.N. standards. For Xiaoxi, the developer
hired Germany's TUEV-SUED as validator, and then commissioned it again later to
confirm that the project complied with European Union and German government
requirements on "stakeholder consultation" - that local people approve of the
project beforehand.

The TUEV-SUED report acknowledged that "the
concerned villagers and their leaders were not involved in the decision
process." But it contended the guidelines' "essence" was fulfilled because those
affected "have improved their living environment." ....

Environmentalists
also point out that hydro power has long been a national priority in China.
Since the 1990s - long before the CDM - the Chinese have added an average 7.7
gigawatts a year of hydro power, equivalent to six Hoover Dams annually,
International Rivers reports. In other words, Chinese planners aren't suddenly
replacing emissions-heavy coal-fired power plants with emissions-free dams.

The Xiaoxi project design document, in fact, says Chinese regulations
would block the building of such a relatively low-output coal plant here. But
that's how planners determined the "emissions reductions" from the $183-million,
135-megawatt dam - by calculating how much carbon dioxide a 135-megawatt
conventional power plant would produce instead. That bottom line - some 450,000
tons of global-warming gases each year - would be added to RWE's permitted
emissions if it buys the Xiaoxi credits, at a current annual cost of $8 million.
And such calculations will be repeated at 37 other Chinese hydro projects where
RWE will buy credits. All told, the 38 are expected to produce more than 16
million CDM credits by 2012, legitimizing 16 million tons of emissions in
Germany, equivalent to more than 1 percent of annual German emissions.
...

The CDM system "can be 'gamed' fairly easily," said German expert
Axel Michaelowa, both a critic and a CDM insider, as a member of the U.N. team
that registers CDM projects. But Michaelowa said the CDM remains "a crucial
bridge between industrialized and developing countries." It has problems but
they can be solved, he said. Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican ex-member of the
board overseeing the CDM, echoed Michaelowa's view. She said it's crucial to
encourage China in particular, whose coal power plants make it the world's
biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, to build clean-energy facilities. And she
counters critics who oppose dams in general because of their environmental
impact. "We cannot continue to demonize hydro," Figueres told the AP. [But
Greenies everywhere else do!]

Governments could slow global
warming dramatically, and buy time to avert disastrous climate change, by
slashing emissions of one of humanity's most familiar pollutants - soot -
according to Nasa scientists. A study by the space agency shows that cutting
down on the pollutant, which has so far been largely ignored by climate
scientists, can have an immediate cooling effect - and prevent hundreds of
thousands of deaths from air pollution at the same time.

At the
beginning of the make-or-break year in international attempts to negotiate a
treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the soot removal proposal - which is being
taken seriously by experts close to the Obama administration - offers hope of a
rapid new way of tackling global warming. Governments have long experience in
acting against soot.

Cutting its emissions has a virtually instantaneous
effect, because it rapidly falls out of the atmosphere, unlike carbon dioxide
which remains there for over a hundred years. And because soot is one of the
worst killers among all pollutants, radical reductions save lives and so should
command popular and political support.

The study - from Nasa's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, and published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry
and Physics - concludes that tackling the pollution provides "substantial
benefits for air quality while simultaneously contributing to climate change
mitigation" and "may present a unique opportunity to engage parties and nations
not yet fully committed to climate change mitigation for its own
sake."

Black carbon, the component of soot that gives it its colour, is
thought to be the second largest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide.
Formed through incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and vegetation, it
delivers a double whammy.

While in the air, it is spread around the globe
by the wind, and helps to heat the atmosphere by absorbing and releasing solar
radiation. And when it falls out it darkens snow and ice, at the poles or high
in mountains, reducing its ability to reflect sunlight. As a result it melts
more quickly, and exposes more dark land or water which absorbs even more
energy, and so increases warming.

The bad news - as the Washington-based
Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development points out - is that soot
is causing global warming to happen much faster than expected. Its president,
Durwood Zaelke, says "black carbon is exacerbating the climate situation":
"Taking quick action is quite simply our only near-term option."

Rich
countries have already reduced their emissions of black carbon from burning
fossil fuels dramatically since the 1950s. The health benefits of a worldwide
cut could be massive. Soot contains up to 40 different cancer-causing chemicals
and can also cause respiratory and heart diseases. It is estimated to cause two
million deaths in the developing world each year - mainly among children - when
emitted from wood-burning stoves in poorly ventilated houses. In Britain,
research has shown that people are twice as likely to die from respiratory
disease when heavily exposed to soot emitted from vehicle
exhausts.

Tackling these two health crises, the Nasa study concludes,
would also be the most effective short-term way of slowing climate change. Its
research shows that the "strongest leverage" on reducing global warming would be
achieved by "reducing emissions from domestic fuel burning" in developing
countries, particularly in Asia, and by "reduction in surface transport
emissions in North America", especially from diesel engines.

In both
cases solutions are known. Cookers using solar energy or biogas, for example,
eliminate smoke. And last month California brought in measures to force trucks
to fit filters to reduce diesel soot emissions by 85 per cent, estimating that
they would save 9,400 lives over the next 16 years.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Despite the hot air, the Antarctic is not
warming up

A deeply flawed new report will be cited ad nauseam by
everyone from the BBC to Al Gore

By Christopher Booker in
Britain

The measures being proposed to meet what President Obama last
week called the need to "roll back the spectre of a warming planet" threaten to
land us with the most colossal bill mankind has ever faced. It might therefore
seem peculiarly important that we can trust the science on which all the alarm
over global warming is based, But nothing has been more disconcerting in this
respect than the methods used by promoters of the warming cause over the years
to plug some of the glaring holes in their scientific argument.

Another
example last week was the much-publicised claim, contradicting all previous
evidence, that Antarctica, the world's coldest continent, is in fact warming up,
Antarctica has long been a major embarrassment to the warmists. Al Gore and co
may have wanted to scare us that the continent which contains 90 per cent of all
the ice on the planet is heating up, because that would be the source of all the
meltwater which they claim will raise sea levels by 20 feet.

However, to
provide all their pictures of ice-shelves "the size of Texas" calving off into
the sea, they have had to draw on one tiny region of the continent, the
Antarctic Peninsula - the only part that has been warming. The vast mass of
Antarctica, all satellite evidence has shown, has been getting colder over the
past 30 years. Last year's sea-ice cover was 30 per cent above average.

So it predictably made headlines across the world last week when a new
study, from a team led by Professor Eric Steig, claimed to prove that the
Antarctic has been heating up after all. As on similar occasions in the past,
all the usual supporters of the cause were called in to whoop up its historic
importance. The paper was published in Nature and heavily promoted by the BBC.
This, crowed journalists such as Newsweek's Sharon Begley, would really be one
in the eye for the "deniers" and "contrarians".

But then a good many
experts began to examine just what new evidence had been used to justify this
dramatic finding. It turned out that it was produced by a computer model based
on combining the satellite evidence since 1979 with temperature readings from
surface weather stations.

The problem with Antarctica, though, is that
has so few weather stations. So what the computer had been programmed to do, by
a formula not yet revealed, was to estimate the data those missing weather
stations would have come up with if they had existed. In other words, while
confirming that the satellite data have indeed shown the Antarctic as cooling
since 1979, the study relied ultimately on pure guesswork, to show that in the
past 50 years the continent has warmed - by just one degree Fahrenheit.

One of the first to express astonishment was Dr Kenneth Trenberth, a
senior scientist with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
and a convinced believer in global warming, who wryly observed "it is hard to
make data where none exists". A disbelieving Ross Hayes, an atmospheric
scientist who has often visited the Antarctic for Nasa, sent Professor Steig a
caustic email ending: "with statistics you can make numbers go to any conclusion
you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for
media coverage."

But it was also noticed that among the members of
Steig's team was Michael Mann, author of the "hockey stick", the most celebrated
of all attempts by the warmists to rewrite the scientific evidence to promote
their cause. The greatest of all embarrassments for the believers in man-made
global warming was the well-established fact that the world was significantly
warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now. "We must get rid of the Mediaeval Warm
Period," as one contributor to the IPCC famously said in an unguarded moment. It
was Dr Mann who duly obliged by getting his computer-model to produce a graph
shaped like hockey stick, eliminating the mediaeval warming and showing recent
temperatures curving up to an unprecedented high.

This instantly became
the warmists' chief icon, made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report. But
Mann's selective use of data and the flaws in his computer model were then so
devastatingly torn apart that it has become the most comprehensively discredited
artefact in the history of science.

The fact that Dr Mann is again
behind the new study on Antarctica is, alas, all part of an ongoing pattern. But
this will not prevent the paper being cited ad nauseam by everyone from the BBC
to Al Gore, when he shortly addresses the US Senate and carries on advising
President Obama behind the scenes on how to roll back that "spectre of a warming
planet". So, regardless of the science, and until the politicians finally wake
up to how they have been duped, what threatens to become the most costly flight
from reality in history will continue to roll remorselessly on its way.

Not the least shocking news of the week was the revelation by that
admirable body the Taxpayers Alliance that last year the number of "middle
managers" in Britain's local authorities rose by a staggering 22 percent.
Birmingham City Council alone has more than 1,000 officials earning over œ50,000
a year. All over Britain senior council officials are now earning salaries which
10 years ago would have seemed unthinkable.

Future historians will
doubtless find it highly significant that just when Britain's economy was about
to collapse, an already hopelessly bloated public sector was expanding faster
than ever. One of the more dramatic changes in British life over the past two
decades has been how, aided by their counterparts in Whitehall and Brussels, the
officials who run our local authorities have become separated from the
communities they used to serve. Floating free of political control, they have
become a new privileged class, able to dictate their own salaries and extend
their own empires, paid for by a public to whom they are no longer accountable.

But if this gulf has already become wide enough, how much more glaring
is it going to become now that the private sector is shrinking so fast? Already
last year an astonishing 2.5 million people were in court for failing or being
unable to pay ever soaring council taxes. Tellingly, the only response of the
Local Government Association to these latest revelations was plaintively to
point out that as many as "2,700" council jobs have already been lost in the
economic downturn. But outside those walls three millon may soon be out of work.
Who will then be left to pay for those salaries and pensions that our new
privilegentsia have arranged for themselves?

How appropriate that
Kenneth Clarke should become "shadow" to Business Secretary Peter Mandelson. As
fervent "Europeans", both men know that almost all the policies of the ministry
laughably renamed the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
are now decided at "European level". There is therefore hardly any job left for
them to do. Mr Clarke will be free to continue advising Centaurus, one of the
largest hedge funds in Europe. Lord Mandelson can carry on running the Labour
Party, But the last thing either will want to admit is that all the powers they
claim or seek to exercise have been handed over to Brussels.

The
Government last week announced that in March it is to sell off 25 million
"carbon credits". These European Union Allowances permit industry and
electricity companies to continue emitting CO2, ultimately paid for by all of us
through our electricity bills. Last summer, when these permits were trading at
31 euros each, this sale might have raised more than œ500 million pounds, Today,
however, thanks to the economic meltdown creating a surplus of credits no longer
needed, their value is dropping so fast that Mr Darling will be lucky to get
œ100 million. That should help reduce our electricity bills - even though Mr
Darling will merely have to extract the cash from us in other ways.

Global warming is the most
important environmental issue of our time. If those who are sounding the alarm
about a possible climate catastrophe are right, then governments must raise
energy costs directly, with taxes, or indirectly, with mandates and subsidies,
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year in
wealth or economic activity will be sucked up and redistributed by
governments.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions even modestly is estimated
to cost the average household in the U.S. approximately $3,372 per year and
would destroy 2.4 million jobs. Electricity prices would double, and
manufacturers would move their factories to places such as China and India that
have cheaper energy and fewer environmental regulations.

If global
warming is indeed a crisis, billions of dollars taken from taxpayers will flow
into the coffers of radical environmental groups, giving them the resources and
stature to implement other parts of their anti-technology, anti-business agenda.
None of that money will go to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This
explains the paradox that even though the scientific community is deeply divided
over the causes and consequences of global warming, every single environmental
advocacy group in the U.S. (and probably the world) believes it is a
crisis.

But global warming is not, in fact, a crisis. Here's how we know
this:

Since 2007, more than 31,072 American scientists, including 9,021
with Ph.D.s, have signed a petition that says, in part, "There is no convincing
scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other
greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause
catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's
climate."

A 2003 international survey of climate scientists (with 530
responding) found only 9.4 percent "strongly agreed" and 25.3 percent "agreed"
with the statement "climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic
causes." Some 10.2 percent "strongly disagreed."

A 2006 survey of
scientists in the U.S. found 41 percent disagreed that the planet's recent
warmth "can be, in large part, attributed to human activity," and 71 percent
disagreed that recent hurricane activity is significantly attributable to human
activity.

A recent review of 1,117 abstracts of scientific journal
articles on "global climate change" found only 13 (1 percent) explicitly endorse
the "consensus view" while 34 reject or cast doubt on the view that human
activity has been the main driver of warming over the past 50 years.

The
mainstream of the scientific community, in other words, does not believe global
warming is a crisis.

The mainstream media has spared no expense in hyping
the view that global warming is a crisis. Television stations broadcast endless
documentaries alleging that global warming is causing everything from the
disappearance of butterflies, frogs, and polar bears to the collapse of a bridge
in Minnesota. Newspapers run "news" stories that are barely re-written news
releases from Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and other environmental advocacy
groups.

Despite this media barrage, most people haven't been fooled into
believing global warming is a crisis. Fewer than half (47 percent) of Americans
polled by the Pew Research Center in 2008 said they believe humans are causing
global warming, and a declining number even believe the Earth is experiencing a
warming trend.

Another poll conducted in 2008 of 12,000 people in 11
countries, commissioned by the financial institution HSBC and environmental
advocacy groups, found fewer than half of those surveyed said they were prepared
to make personal lifestyle changes to reduce carbon emissions, down from 58
percent last year; only 37 percent said they were willing to spend "extra time"
on the effort, an eight-point drop; and only one in five respondents--or 20
percent--said they'd spend extra money to reduce climate change. That's down
from 28 percent a year ago.

Except for radical environmentalists--who
always have been a small minority of the general public and even a minority
within the environmental movement--most people don't " believe" in global
warming. They believe--and rightly so--that the science is still undecided and
government action is unnecessary.

Unfortunately, politicians respond to
the loudest and best-funded interest groups, not to the voices of scientists or
the average Joe. So they are in a tizzy about "doing something" to "stop global
warming." President-elect Barack Obama, for example, recently proclaimed: "Few
challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate
change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are
rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought, spreading famine,
and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate
change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to
weaken our economy and threaten our national security."

There is not a
single statement in this brief passage that is true. Lord Christopher Monckton,
a British climate skeptic, wrote recently that "on all measures, there has been
no increase in global mean surface temperatures since 1995; and, according to
the University of Alabama at Huntsville, near-surface temperatures in 2008 will
be lower than in 1980, 28 years ago, the first complete year of satellite
observations. On all measures, global temperatures have been falling for seven
full years since late 2001."

Monckton goes on, in a paper published by
the American Thinker on November 26, to dispute, point by point, each of Obama's
claims about sea levels, coastlines, drought, famine, and storms. None of
Monckton's points is original: The rebuttals have appeared many times in the
scientific literature and even occasionally in the mainstream media. One of the
most persuasive compilations of this literature is S. Fred Singer's Nature, Not
Human Activity, Rules the Climate, which The Heartland Institute published
earlier this year.

Politicians should realize the public doesn't want
global warming legislation. Last June, when the 500-page Climate Security Act
was introduced in the U.S. Senate, even Democrats fled from the massive costs
and bureaucracy it would have entailed. As environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and
Michael Shellenberger reported at the time, "Democratic leaders finally killed
the debate to avert an embarrassing defeat, but by then they had handed
Republicans a powerful political club. Republicans have been bludgeoning
Democrats with it ever since."

If global warming is not a crisis, what
should policymakers do about it? The answer, obviously, is "nothing." This is
not a problem that needs to be solved. The case should be marked "closed" and
policymakers should move on to other, more important, issues.

Should we
reduce emissions "just in case"? Danish environmental expert Bj”rn Lomborg,
among many others, demolishes this argument. He points out that "even if every
industrialised country, including the United States, had accepted the [Kyoto]
Protocol, and everyone had lived up to its requirements for the entire century,
it would have had virtually no impact, even a hundred years from now. It would
reduce the global temperature increase by an immeasurable 0.15§C by the year
2100." That empty gesture would have cost taxpayers and consumers trillions of
dollars.

It is not politically correct simply to dismiss global warming
as a "scam." Those who care more about being popular than right--including,
alas, the just-quoted Bj”rn Lomborg--therefore call for "dramatically increasing
the funding into energy research and development" so that new low-carbon
technology will become available faster. How silly this is.

Private
industry spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on research and
development on energy efficiency and alternatives to conventional fossil fuels.
Governments spend tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars subsidizing solar,
wind, and "clean coal" research and commercialization. Foundations offer prizes
worth tens of millions of dollars to inventors and entrepreneurs who can reduce
our "carbon footprint."

Will more spending by governments make any
difference? What is the government's record of encouraging innovation and market
successes? How much would be enough? For how many more years? Advocates of more
spending on energy research and development technology have no answers to these
questions, or at least no answers that support their case. It's all waste at
best and fraud at worst. Their appeals should be rejected, firmly and
completely. It's time to put an end to global warming alarmism.

The Earth has shown an
under-reported cooling trend for eight straight years, raising serious questions
about the accuracy of the UN's climate projections, since not one of the
computer models on which it relies had predicted so long and steep a cooling,
says a new review paper -- Temperature Change and CO2 Change - A Scientific
Briefing --from the Science and Public Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.
think tank.

The paper posits that "The chief reason for scepticism at the
official position on "global warming" is the overwhelming weight of evidence
that the UN's climate panel, the IPCC, prodigiously exaggerates both the
supposed causes and the imagined consequences of anthropogenic "global warming";
that too many of the exaggerations can be demonstrated to have been deliberate;
and that the IPCC and other official sources have continued to rely even upon
those exaggerations that have been definitively demonstrated in the literature
to have been deliberate.

"In short," writes Monckton, "science is being
artfully manipulated to the point of what are in essence political and not
scientific conclusions - a conclusion that is congenial to powerful factions
whose ambition is not to identify scientific truth but rather to advance the
special vested interests with which they identify themselves.

The paper
demonstrates that if CO2 concentration continues to rise more slowly than the
IPCC had predicted, and if climate sensitivity to CO2 concentration is in any
event well below the IPCC's projected range, the likelihood of any "global
warming" >2 øC/century to 2100 is vanishingly small.

Monckton also
demonstrates that official sources have:

relied upon questionable and
occasionally downright dishonest methods to inflate the observed rate of
temperature increase

created the false impression that the rate of
increase is itself rising when an identical argument can be used to demonstrate
that it is falling

diminished earlier and warmer temperatures in this
century

abolished the mediaeval warm period

diverted attention
away from the fact that throughout almost all of the Holocene, and throughout
all four previous interglacial periods, surface temperatures were considerably
warmer than they are today.

Says SPPI president, Robert Ferguson, "When
the climate science is wrong, the policies are wrong, and then both people and
the environment are harmed. It is past time that the media and elected officials
stop treating "man-made global warming" as a religion and started asking some
serious and pointed questions. This paper lays the ground work for
that."

Okay, children, let’s all
sit up straight at our desks. We are going to begin 2009 with a lesson about
carbon dioxide (CO2). Why do we need to know about CO2? Because the
President-elect, several of his choices for environmental and energy agencies,
the Supreme Court and much of the U.S. Congress has no idea what they are
talking about and, worse, want to pass legislation and regulations that will
further bankrupt the United States of America. Do I have your attention now?

For the purpose of the lesson, I will be borrowing heavily from a paper
on CO2 written by Robert A. Ashworth. It requires some understanding of science,
but anyone with a reasonable education and common sense should be able to read
it on their own. Ashworth is a chemical engineer.

Suffice it to say that
if any of the nitwits babbling about CO2 and global warming ever went to any of
the several dozen excellent websites that provide accurate scientific data and
analysis, they would cease from their abusive manipulation of the public and
perhaps find honest work.

To begin at the beginning; at the heart of the
global warming hoax is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. While it purports to represent the views of thousands of scientists, it
does not. As Ashworth notes, “Most scientists do not agree with the CO2 global
warming premise. In the United States 31,072 scientists, including the author,
have signed a petition rejecting the Kyoto global warming agreement.” An
additional 1,000 scientists are being verified to be added to the list.
Thousands more exist who find the assertion the CO2 will destroy the Earth
totally absurd.

Here’s what you need to know; if an increase in carbon
dioxide (CO2) is directly related, i.e. causes changes in the Earth’s
temperature, there would be a direct correlation between the two. As CO2 rose,
we would see a comparable rise in the Earth’s temperature. This correlation does
not exist.

Global warming liars, however, insist that CO2 builds up on
the atmosphere over a 50 to 250 year period, but this is untrue. “Every year
around April, increased CO2 absorption by plants in the Northern Hemisphere
starts reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere,” notes Ashworth, “and the reduction
continues until around mid-to-late August when plants start to go dormant.”

“It is clear that nature reacts very fast in its consumption of carbon
dioxide.” Farmers call this the growing season, followed by the harvest season,
followed by snow and cold during which nothing grows. Modern civilization,
beginning about 5,000 years ago, is predicated on the ability to provide food to
both humans and livestock, all based on these obvious seasonal cycles.

The ancient Egyptians and Mayans understood the seasons, but they are
apparently too difficult a concept for today’s many ex-politicians, some PhD’s,
United Nation’s flunkies, and high school teachers.

Warming and cooling
cycles are well known throughout human history, reaching back to the days of
ancient Rome. There were Viking settlements in Greenland because they arrived in
warmer times. By 1410 the place froze up. Shakespeare lived during a Little Ice
Age when the Thames would freeze too. The man-made emissions of CO2 had nothing,
zero, to do with these climate events.

The IPCC, however, with its
agenda to tax and control energy use that produces CO2, is not based on either
the obvious or more complex science involved. Its “data” is the invention of
computer models that are deliberately manipulated to produce false results
which, in turn, can be announced and repeated worldwide.

In March 2008,
The Heartland Institute brought together more than 500 climatologists,
meteorologists, economists, and others for two days of seminars and addresses
that totally destroyed the IPCC’s lies. It will do so again for a second time,
March 8-10 of this year in New York City. Suffice it to say that the mainstream
media did it best to ridicule or ignore the event and will no doubt do so again.

Here, then, is a fundamental fact about CO2 you need to commit to
memory. “Nature absorbs 98.5% of the CO2 that is emitted by nature and man.”
Nature is a totally self-regulating mechanism that dwarfs any mindless effort to
“control” the amount of CO2 produced by coal-fired utilities, steel
manufacturers, autos and trucks, and gasoline fueled lawn mowers, not to forget
fireplaces where logs glow or just about any human activity you can name,
including exhaling two pounds of the stuff every day!

“Further,” says
Ashworth, “no regulation by man is necessary because CO2 is not a pollutant; it
is part of the animal-plant life cycle. Without it, life would not exist on
Earth. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases plant growth, which is a very
good thing during a period of world population growth and an increasing demand
for food.”

“Taxing carbon,” Ashworth adds, “would do absolutely nothing
to improve the climate but would be devastating hardship to the people of the
world.” For example, U.S. Representative John Dingell’s plan to tax carbon would
add 13% to the cost of electricity and 32% to the cost of gasoline; just what we
need during a Recession that threatens to become a Depression.

Dr. Tim
Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, recently
asked, “How many failed predictions, discredited assumptions and evidence of
incorrect data are required before an idea loses credibility? CO2 is not causing
warming or climate change. It is not a toxic substance or a pollutant.”

It is time to rebuke everyone attempting to foist the global warming
hoax and carbon taxes on the United States and the rest of the world. It is time
let Congress and the White House know that Americans will not be ruled by laws
that have no scientific merit.

As a new member of the California State Assembly, I have introduced my
first bill to suspend AB32 - the so-called California Global Warming Solutions
Act of 2006. In 2006, on a party-line vote, legislative Democrats passed AB32
over the objections of Republicans. Authored by then-Assembly Speaker Fabien
N£¤ez, ostensibly to combat the effects of global warming, AB32 forces
businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.
Appealing to the politically correct crowd of 2006, AB32 was hailed far and wide
by left-leaning political elites. They could not have envisioned our economic
downturn or the devastating effects of AB32 on California's economy and it's
environment - or could they?

There have been economic slumps in past
decades and subsequent recoveries. But there are major differences between then
and now. The military build-up of the Regan administration and California's
extensive military and defense industry infrastructure fueled the economic
rebound of the 1980s. In the 1990s, the housing boom spurred economic growth
even in the face of the Gray Davis deficit and the Legislature's out-of-control
spending. The difference today is that California no longer enjoys a robust
military and defense industry economy and California's housing industry is in
shambles.

It gets worse. Compounded by California's hostile regulatory
environment, businesses are now expected to try to compete in a global economy.
Sacramento liberals may say, "let them eat cake" but the global economy, by
definition, means global competition - for states too.

California's
implementation of AB32 has crippled our ability to compete in the global
economy. Our prosperity is not just impacted by neighboring states, but by other
nations. Competitors like India and China cheer our environmental regulations.
Meanwhile, China is experiencing an industrial revolution the world has never
seen. They are creating wealth and prosperity while we move money around. China
and India are also building 600 coal-fire power plants over the next few years,
which, when in operation, will negate any gains achieved by AB32 in a matter of
days.

In response to this, the left claims, "We will create green jobs,
like solar panels." Unfortunately, we are now importing solar panels from China
and those panels are being produced by plants powered by coal-fired plants
(carbon emissions) and shipped to America.

Because of our high land
costs, environmental fees, impact fees, and over-regulation of business, we will
end up buying the green technology and products from Nevada, Texas, Mexico and
China. The growing chorus in business is A.B.C. . Anywhere But California.

In the last year alone, California lost 95,000 private sector jobs and
our manufacturing base has been devastated. An independent economist stated AB32
is a threat to our remaining 1.5 million manufacturing jobs.

AB32 will
hurt our environment. AB32 is a job killer - businesses can't comply and remain
competitive, so they are leaving. This has resulted in less tax revenue for
environmental mitigation, bringing a halt to many programs that keep our public
safe from toxic waste and limit our ability to provide safe, clean, water. As of
now, there are thousands of toxic sites in California and no money to mitigate.

Given the current state of our economy, AB32 must be suspended before it
suspends our funding for schools, law enforcement, parks, water storage, and any
hope of economic recovery. At its most basic analysis --- no private sector
jobs, no economy, no tax revenues for the state for anything. We will be broke.
But we will be politically correct and Hollywood will love us!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

British government trying to water down
European emissions law

The UK government is lobbying to water down
proposed EU legislation to impose tough new emission limits on power plants in
order to guarantee Britain's energy security and keep down electricity prices.
Whitehall is warning, according a briefing document leaked to green campaigners
and seen by the Guardian, that electricity prices would increase by 20% if the
proposed legislation isn't changed. It is also concerned that the new rules
would threaten the security of the UK's electricity supply.

The proposed
European directive would pose a serious threat to the construction of the
Kingsnorth power station in Kent - the UK's first new coal plant for three
decades. Campaigners accuse ministers of "planning for failure" by seeking to
expand coal generation capacity and keep "dirty" coal stations open when they
should instead focus on hitting renewable energy and efficiency targets. Coming
just days after the decision to expand Heathrow by adding a third runway, they
see it as the latest example of the government not living up to its rhetoric on
climate change (see panel).

Tomorrow the environment committee of the
European Parliament will vote on more than 500 amendments tabled to the proposed
new legislation - the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)
directive.

The proposed IPPC directive incorporates changes to current
legislation such as the large combustion plant legislation (LCPD) and lays out
tighter limits, for example on sulphur dioxide emissions. The 4-page leaked
Whitehall paper is a briefing note prepared for MEPs. It says that the LCPD
directive "raises potentially serious issues about security of electricity
supply" and could even damage "moves to low-carbon electricity
generation".

Current EU laws allow power stations that are not fitted
with equipment to remove sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide to operate for a
limited period each day, but only until 2015. This affects around a seventh
(10.5GW) of Britain's electricity generation capacity. Whitehall says that up to
a further 8GW of generating capacity may close if the proposed tougher rules in
the IPPC directive are applied - meaning that in 2015 around a quarter of
capacity would shut at the same time. According to the document this would
reduce the margin for error at times of high power demand. "With projected new
investments, electricity capacity margins (spare capacity to meet exceptionally
cold winters or temporary plant shutdowns) are projected to fall from around 10%
to around 7% from the beginning of 2016 and remain depressed for some three
years after," the paper says.

It adds: "That period of reduced security
margin will be reflected in electricity price increases of some 20% above those
which are predicted in the absence of the proposed [Large Combustion Plant]
provisions." The paper sounds a drastic warning that it may prove impossible to
build and operate replacement plant by the end of 2015, saying this would
"exacerbate the risks and shortfalls" outlined.

"Moreover, since
investment decisions and design need to be completed within the next two years
to meet a 2016 deadline, such plant is therefore almost certain to be built
using currently commercialised technologies which, of course, do not currently
include carbon capture and storage (CCS)," says the document, which is entitled
"UK Concerns on the Proposed Recast Industrial Emissions (IPPC) Directives
Provisions Concerning Large Combustion Plants.

The government is calling
for greater flexibility to be introduced into the proposed IPPC directive, which
covers some 500 power plants across Europe, so that UK electricity and gas
supplies are not threatened. It has won some backing from other EU countries
which would like the new law to take effect from 2020.

Economy Minister Michael Glos continuous to have serious
misgivings about the EU decisions on emissions trading to combat climate change
from 2013. On Thursday, the CSU-politician joined the call by his scientific
advisory board to radically transform the emissions trading system. In its
report, the scientific advisory board urged to repeal strict limits for CO2
emissions.

Instead, emissions allowances should be allocated on a
flexible basis and a corridor for price controls introduced. Glos said: "I
welcome the proposal to set prices for the period from 2013 through the flexible
issuing of certificates in a stabel price range." The background for the
concerns is that the rules adopted by the EU in December for emissions trading
could result in sharp price swings of emissions permits.

Glos said the
fear of price uncertainty could discourage investments. "In addition, the
current scheme would cost us valuable jobs if they move abroad as a result."
Glos regretted that the recommendations of the scientific advisory board had not
been taken into consideration by the EU.

Commissions and nonprofits charged with conserving parks,
wildlife, water and mountain areas of the state are at risk of laying off staff
or closing since the state stopped funding last month. The money freeze has
immobilized construction of new biking trails along the Santa Ana River in San
Bernardino and Orange counties. It has stopped plans to tear down the Matilija
Dam in Ventura County and restore the sediment-filled Matilija reservoir. It has
impeded efforts to boost the populations of salmon and steelhead trout off the
coast of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The halting of such projects
is one of the most concrete results of California's cash crunch. Last month the
state's top financial officials froze all state projects that rely on borrowed
money. The funds for the environmental projects come mostly from four bond
measures approved by voters since 2000. In all, more than 750 environmental
projects in Los Angeles County and the four surrounding counties have had their
funding, totaling $420 million, stopped, according to an analysis of state
records.

Most of the green
energy talk these days is about how renewable energy will help reduce global
climate disruption by lowering the output of greenhouse gases. But there are
other costs associated with ungreen energy, too, including environmental
contamination inflicted by the extraction of fossil fuels like coal and
petroleum. Those costs are borne unequally by the haves and have-nots of this
planet, but geographic separation often allows us to ignore this inconvenient
truth. That is, unless someone makes us look.

Photographers Lou Dematteis
and Kayana Szymczak visited Ecuador between 2003 and 2007 to document the
aftermath of oil drilling by Texaco (now a division of Chevron). They've just
published their photos in "Crude Reflections: Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the
Amazon Rainforest", a collection of disturbingly beautiful photographs from City
Lights Books.

The
photo is captioned: "The photographers and members of the Achuar tribe travel by
canoe on the Pastaza River to the village of Sharamentza". And just look at how
that canoe is ploughing through the river. It must have a huge gas-guzzling
outboard driving it. A prime example of the "ungreen energy" that they are
condemning. Condemn oil drilling and then use a huge gob of its product? "Yes,
we can"!

Greenie people-haters at it again --
Australia "Full up"

Very strange ideas in a mostly empty country.
Most people who live in Manhattan wouldn't live anywhere else but it has at
least 100 times the population-density of Australia

Prominent
Australians have thrown their support behind a controversial new book which
argues that population growth is the biggest threat to environmental
sustainability in this country. In a provocative attack on water conservation
schemes, such as Melbourne's Target 155, the book Overloading Australia urges
Australians to ignore water conservation, forcing politicians to rethink
population and immigration policy.

Focusing on perhaps the most taboo
aspect of environmental debate, authors Mark O'Connor and William Lines have
argued that pro-immigration and "baby bonus" policies are at odds with plans to
reduce carbon emissions and secure water supplies. "The task of simultaneously
increasing population and achieving sustainability is impossible," the book
argues. Predicting Australian cities will suffer more congestion, pollution,
loss of biodiversity and diminished services, the authors argue there is no
point conserving water "until we get restraint in population".

O'Connor
said his background was largely in poetry, yet
despite his lack of conventional expertise in demography and population studies,
his book has struck a chord with prominent Australians and increasingly echoes
the views of leading environmentalists. Former New South Wales premier Bob Carr
has agreed to launch the book next week, and has lauded O'Connor's previous
books about the perils of unchecked population growth. The Australian
Conservation Foundation has also called for a "substantial reduction" in the
nation's skilled migration program in this year's budget. In its budget
submission, the foundation said Australia's population needed to be stabilised
at "an ecologically sustainable level". "Population increase makes it harder for
Australia to reduce carbon pollution levels and is placing immense stress on
state and regional planning, infrastructure and ecological systems."

The
comments will resonate with the Brumby Government [of Vivtoria], which has
presided over an increase in total emissions in recent years, despite
improvements in emissions on a per capita basis. Monash University population
expert Dr Bob Birrell, who has read Overloading Australia, said despite the
global nature of the emissions problem, national borders still mattered because
people tended to adopt the typical emissions profile of the nation they lived
in. "When you add an extra million in a society like ours you are imposing a
very considerable additional burden, there is no way of escaping it, and that's
the key to understanding why the population issue is so serious in Australia; we
live very high on the hog," he said.

Australia will welcome a maximum of
203,500 new migrants this financial year, with skilled migration accounting for
133,500 of those places, and refugees just 13,500. A spokesman for Immigration
Minister Chris Evans said the Rudd Government had started developing a
longer-term migration plan that would consider "net overseas migration rates and
the impact of demographic changes".

Victoria has swelled by about 1500
people a week in recent years, a rate that Premier John Brumby has described as
"about as fast as we want to go".

Friday, January 23, 2009

"Global warming leads to the
water in which frogs live heating up, evaporating and becoming shallower, so
ultraviolet rays find it easier to penetrate their habitats and cause
mutations".

UK: Cold weather wipes out a whole generation of
frogs

"The cold snap has been bad news for the common frog tadpoles,
wiping out a whole generation of frogs as their shallow breeding pools have been
turned to thick ice with heavy frosts on three consecutive nights".

Two separate studies through NASA confirm that
since 2003, the world's oceans have been losing heat. In the peak of the recent
warming trend, 1998 actually ranked 2nd to 1934 as the warmest year on record.
John Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, published his first
report about the warming oceans. He used data from1993-2003 that showed the
warm-up and followed the Global Warming Theory.

In 2006, he co-piloted a
follow-up study led by John Lyman at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in
Seattle that updated the time series for 2003-2005. Surprisingly, the ocean
seemed to have cooled. He was surprised, and called it a 'speed bump' on the way
to global warming.

A second, independent study was conducted. Takmeng
Wong and his colleagues at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia came up
with the same results. Wong studies net flux of solar energy at the top of our
atmosphere. From the 1980s to 1990s his team noticed increased amounts net
energy when comparing incoming solar energy to what Earth radiates and reflects.
Since then, the solar flux has remained the same. Other studies have suggested
that the sun's output has decreased in the past few years. Wong's take is that
melting arctic ice is responsible for the cooling of the oceans.

I
contend that if that were the case, why did it take until 2003 to show cooling,
after a few decades of warming? Also, the UKMET office showed that Earth's
temperatures have been cooling for the past five years. Since 75% of the planet
is water, that would make sense.

Just last week, I wrote about the
arctic sea ice returning to 1979 levels just 1 1/2 years after the fear of the
biggest summer ice retreat in 2007.

But what about the basics? Ocean
temperatures do experience a 'lag' or delay in heating and cooling. That is why
Ocean City's surf temperatures are chilly during Memorial Day weekend, but warm
significantly by Labor Day weekend. The average Northern Hemisphere's peak heat
(air temp) is in mid-July, while the Atlantic Ocean's peak heat (water) is in
mid-September. The ocean temperature peaks in mid-September coincide with
heightened hurricane activity.

So, could these reports indicate that
melting cools the oceans and has a negative feedback on warming? Is this just a
speed bump in the general trend of warming? Does this 'surprise' almost sound
like they are disappointed that the warming trend has not continued so far? Or
is this just part of a natural cycle, such as the seasons, but on a larger
scale?

With regard to cycles, we have only been sampling and studying a
small part of Earth's history and have perhaps jumped to conclusions about the
impact of carbon dioxide (there are more potent gases such as methane that don't
make headlines). What do you think? What about the 'surprise' of the
scientists?

Environmentalism is the social movement of the "landed
interest" - an interest parallel to that of neither business nor labour.
"Environmentalism" is readily identifiable in early 19th century Britain. This
essay draws from the best-known writings of the era's three most influential
intellectuals for a portrait of an anti-democratic, anti-liberal social movement
based in the aristocracy but claiming to represent the masses; a movement
permeated with the ideas of over-population theorist T. Malthus; a movement
benefitting from restricting land supply and suffering from advancing
agricultural technology; that fought a cultural civil war using literary
Romanticism and monkish asceticism; that was militantly protectionist regarding
agriculture; that constrained industrial progress and spread fear of
catastrophe.

Cheaper
to fly than hire a bike. You have to understand that this is a religious thing.
Logic is irrelevant

It's cheaper to hire a car, fly to Sydney or take
a limousine to the Gold Coast than ride a bike all day as part of Brisbane's new
cycle hire scheme. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman came good on an election promise
by awarding the contract to JCDecaux to provide 2000 bikes at 150 stations
across the inner-city. However, despite claims it would be free, that only
applies for the first half-hour and users will still be charged $20 to buy a
helmet and up to $300 deposit. For an hour's hire it will be $2, for 11/2 hours
$5.50 and up to $150 for more than 10 hours. Which means a person wanting to
hire a bike for an entire day on a casual basis, once adding in the helmet fee
and subscription fee ($10), will pay $180.

At yesterday's launch, Cr
Newman denied he had misled voters. "What I said is we were endeavouring to
introduce a scheme like in Paris," he said. "I said we would try and get as
close as possible to that and I'll just maintain, I was there at the
announcement, I know what I said and that's exactly what we delivered." It's the
first scheme of its kind in Australia with stations to be located between St
Lucia and Newstead.

The council signed a 20-year contract with JCDecaux
and ratepayers will pay about $1.5 million over the next three years, but Cr
Newman was unsure what the contribution would be each year after that. "Over a
20-year life, it could potentially generate $9 million of revenue for council.
[If anybody uses it!] So ultimately it won't cost the ratepayers of
Brisbane," he said. Cr Newman said he was confident the scheme would be
successful and promised to use it himself and encourage his staff to do the
same. "Let's just see how it goes over the coming months ... ultimately it's
going to be very popular," he said.

JCDecaux, which has 16 cycle schemes
across Europe, said bikes would be on Brisbane streets by the end of the year.
"It's a new system, using new technology, of course there's going to be
glitches, but I think it's an overwhelming success," CEO Steve O'Connor
said.

Bicycle Queensland manager Ben Wilson said the bike hire scheme was
for short-term not all-day use. "And for that, it's very reasonably priced," he
said. Opposition Leader Shayne Sutton said Labor supported the scheme if it was
implemented properly. "The Lord Mayor needs to ensure there are safe, designated
bikeways for cyclists to use," she said.

The present
world financial crisis has seen the great economist John Maynard Keynes making a
comeback, with even a fiscal conservative like Kevin Rudd espousing Keynesian
deficit finance. Keynes is also remembered for his remark that "madmen in
authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some
academic scribbler of a few years back". That is an apt description of the
climate change mantras that led to the appointment of the Garnaut Review, and
the Review's Final Report itself exhibits frenzy distilled from not a few
scribblers of the past, including Malthus, Jevons and Arrhenius of the
nineteenth century, Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome and the IPCC's John Houghton
of the last century, not forgetting James Hansen (of the Goddard Institute of
Space Studies) and his acolyte Al Gore.

Ehrlich and the Club of Rome
confidently predicted exhaustion of all mineral resources by 2000 if not before,
and the Garnaut Report merely extends the final date to 2100. Malthus earned
fame with his theory that while population grows "geometrically", for example by
doubling every twenty-five years (we would say exponentially) food production
grows only "arithmetically", that is, by the same absolute amount in every time
period.

Arrhenius took over this formulation in his celebrated paper of
1896 that remains the cornerstone of the anthropogenic global warming (or
climate change) movement, by asserting that while atmospheric carbon dioxide
"increases in geometric progression, augmentation of the temperature will
increase in nearly arithmetic progression". Arrhenius won a real Nobel for
proceeding to calculate that if carbon dioxide increased by 50 per cent from the
level in 1896, global average temperature would increase by between 2.9 and 3.7
degrees, depending on season, latitude and hemisphere, with a global annual mean
of 3.42 degrees. The level of carbon dioxide has nearly increased by 50 per cent
since 1896-faster it is true than Arrhenius expected-but global temperature
according to the Goddard Institute has increased by just 0.73
degrees.

Malthus has long since been proved wrong about food production,
which has grown exponentially even faster than population, so that the recurring
starvation and population wipe-outs that Malthus feared have yet to materialise.
Evidently Arrhenius has been nearly as mistaken, but in a different direction,
with global temperature growing almost imperceptibly relative to the near 50 per
cent growth in carbon dioxide. Yet the Garnaut Review endorses the claim by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest Report (2007)
that if carbon dioxide doubles from the level in 1896 (270 to 280 parts per
million, ppm) to 560 ppm, global temperature will rise by between 1.5 and 4
degrees, with a central estimate of 3 degrees, the latter being four times the
observed increase of 0.73 degrees for the near 50 per cent rise in carbon
dioxide since 1896. Yet Arrhenius had calculated that doubling carbon dioxide
from the 1896 level would raise annual global mean temperature by 5.5 degrees,
just 1.6 times more than his estimate for an increase of carbon dioxide by 50
per cent. Thus the Review and the IPCC predict an acceleration of temperature
increase with respect to increasing carbon dioxide, despite also asserting that
the relationship is logarithmic rather than exponential, or, as the Review puts
it, using terminology close to that of Arrhenius, "CO2 added later will cause
proportionately less warming than CO2 added now".

This is an
extraordinary contradiction given that the Garnaut Review as a whole is
dedicated to the proposition that global warming will accelerate unless carbon
dioxide emissions are subjected to draconian reductions, by as much as 80 per
cent of the 2000 level in Australia. But as we shall see, the Report has other
equally bizarre contradictions that exemplify Keynes's comment about "madmen in
authority, who hear voices in the air".

The Labor governments of
Australia's states and territories commissioned the Garnaut Climate Change
Review in April 2007. The newly elected federal Labor government took over the
Review in November 2007. Its terms of reference required the Review to assess
"The likely effect of human-induced climate change on Australia's economy,
environment, and water resources", and to "recommend medium to long-term policy
options for Australia ... which, taking the costs and benefits of domestic and
international policies on climate change into account, will produce the best
possible outcomes for Australia". Given this provenance, the Review's Final
Report (2008) is above all a political document.

The Report runs to 634
pages and twenty-four chapters, rambling over a wide range of topics, from the
science of climate change to the economics of mitigation to prevent change.
Clearly it is not possible here to do justice to the whole Report. Instead the
focus will be on its unsound economics whereby benefits of avoiding future
climate change are exaggerated and costs of avoidance minimised. The centrepiece
of the Report's mitigation proposals is its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), yet
this receives only a cursory treatment that fails to grasp its likely disruption
of the Australian economy.

The Report makes many dire projections for the
future, including the claim that without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions, chiefly carbon dioxide, there will by 2100 be major declines in gross
domestic product (GDP) across the globe, and that in Australia its iconic
tourist attractions such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu National Park will
be destroyed by ocean acidification and rising sea levels, while endemic
droughts will eviscerate the Murray-Darling Basin. For Australia the Draft
Report projected "the median temperature and rainfall outcomes for Australia
from climate change with unmitigated growth in global emissions [that] may see
GDP fall from the reference case by around 4.8 per cent, household consumption
by 5.4 per cent and real wages by 7.8 per cent by 2100".

The Report
offers no evidence for such effects having already become apparent despite the
warming temperatures experienced globally and in Australia since 1976. On the
contrary, that whole period has seen the fastest economic growth ever recorded
across almost the whole globe, and Australia is no exception. The last decade of
the twentieth century was the hottest on record, but it also delivered
Australia's longest known sequence of per capita GDP growth above 2.5 per cent
annually.

New Antarctic `Warming' study is a guesstimate
that defies the known facts

The whole thing is based on
"estimates" and "reconstructions" of Antarctic temperatures, not on actual
measurements! How surprising that the authors come up with "estimates" that
confirm their well-known beliefs! Excerpts from one commentary below. See the
original for links. First however, see below an amusing graph taken from the home page of one of the authors
of the new "study". It is a graph of actual warming and shows -- wait for it
-- that Antarctica COOLED. These crooks cannot even keep their own story
straight! I'm saving a copy of the graph in case they delete it

A new study on Antarctic temperatures -
which is contrary to the findings of multiple previous studies - claims "that
since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has
warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, but still is 50 degrees below zero."

Despite the fact that the study was immediately viewed with major
skepticism by scientists who are not skeptical of anthropogenic global warming
claims, many in the media pounced on the study as a chance to attack those
skeptical of man-made climate doom. According to the release of the study, "The
researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and
from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends.
[.] The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations
corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That
allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in
areas of the continent without weather stations." (emphasis added)

Few
media outlets noted that in 2007 Antarctic "sea ice coverage has grown to record
levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979, according to peer-reviewed
studies and scientists who study the area."

The new Antarctic study was
published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature and the lead author of the
study was Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and Space
Sciences. Other co-authors include: David Schneider of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, a former student of Steig's; Scott
Rutherford of Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI; and Michael Mann of
Pennsylvania State University.

UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth,
who is not in any way a climate change skeptic, said of the study, "I remain
somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist." Echoing
Trenberth's analysis were several other scientists.

Climatologist Dr.
John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville questioned the study.
"One must be very cautious with such results because they have no real way to be
validated," Christy told the AP. "In other words, we will never know what the
temperature was over the very large missing areas that this technique attempts
to fill in so that it can be tested back through time," Christy added.

Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., senior
scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder said the authors of the
Antarctic study "overstated" their results. "In terms of the significance of
their paper, it overstates what they have obtained from their analysis," Pielke
told the AP. "In the abstract they write, for example, `West Antarctic warming
exceeds 0.1C per decade over the past 50 years.' However, even a cursory view of
Figure 2 shows that since the late 1990s, the region has been cooling in their
analysis in this region. The paper would be more balanced if they presented this
result, even if they cannot explain why," Pielke wrote. Pielke also questioned
how the authors "reconcile the conclusions in their paper with the cooler than
average long term sea surface temperature anomalies off of the coast of
Antarctica." Pielke added, "These cool anomalies have been there for at least
several years. This cool region is also undoubtedly related to the above average
Antarctic sea ice areal coverage that has been monitored over recent years."

A critical analysis of the paper from December 21, 2008, accused the
authors of the Antarctic study of making questionable data "adjustments." (See:
Scientist adjusts data -- presto, Antarctic cooling disappears - December 21,
2008) The analysis concluded, "Looks like [study author] Steig 'got rid of'
Antarctic cooling the same way [Michael] Mann got rid of medieval warming. Why
not just look at the station data instead of 'adjusting' it (graph above)? It
shows a 50-year cooling trend," the analysis concluded.

The BBC's
Richard Black filed a report on the new study that included this claim: "'It's
hard to think of any situation where increased greenhouse gases would not lead
to warming in Antarctica,' said Drew Shindell from NASA's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies (GISS) in New York." Sadly, Black of the BBC does not report that
the promoters of man-made global warming fears had already concocted
explanations for the failure of Antarctica to warm as models predicted.

The warming partisans at RealClimate.org have claimed that a cooling
Antarctica is just what the models predict! "A cold Antarctica is just what
calculations predict," stated a February 12, 2008, post on Real Climate titled
"Antarctica is Cold? Yeah, We Knew That." The website claimed "Despite the
recent announcement that the discharge from some Antarctic glaciers is
accelerating, we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are
getting colder, and indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica
has actually been getting bigger. Doesn't this contradict the calculations that
greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is
just what calculations predict. and have predicted for the past quarter
century."

So which is it? Models predict Antarctic cooling or do they
predict warming? If Antarctica is now allegedly warming, why didn't the models
predict that? The spin [more like a cartwheel] by Michael Mann of
RealClimate.org and the media on this study is stunning.

Real Climate's
logic was mocked by Professor Roger Pielke, Jr., professor in the environmental
studies program at the University of Colorado. "So a warming Antarctica and a
cooling Antarctica are both `consistent with' model projections of global
warming. Our foray into the tortured logic of 'consistent with' in climate
science raises the perennial question, what observations of the climate system
would be inconsistent with the model predictions?" Pielke Jr. wrote on January
21.

Some more reactions to the New Study

Michael "Hockey
Stick" Mann Touts Study as a Way to Refute Skeptics. Excerpt: "Contrarians have
sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is
cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming," said study co-author
Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State
University and Real Climate contributor. "Now we can say: no, it's not true ...
It is not bucking the trend." [Note: For a reality check on Michael Mann's
failed attempt to resurrect the "Hockey Stick," see this report.]

Meteorologist Anthony Watts who runs WattsUpWithThat.com also questioned
Mann's involvement in the study. "Anytime Michael Mann gets involved in a paper
and something is 'deduced' it makes me wary of the veracity of the methodology.
Why? Mann can't even correct simple faults like latitude-longitude errors in
data used in previous papers he's written," Watts wrote on January 21.

Even Pro-AGW scientists wary of this new study! Kevin Trenberth says `I
remain somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist.' Excerpt:
The researchers used satellite data and mathematical formulas to fill in missing
information. That made outside scientists queasy about making large conclusions
with such sparse information. "This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I
have to say I remain somewhat skeptical," Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis
chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. "It is
hard to make data where none exist." Shindell said it was more comprehensive
than past studies and jibed with computer models.

Alabama State
Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville slams
new Antarctic study for using "best estimate of the continents temperature"
Excerpt: Technique questioned: Researchers in this study developed a new
technique that combined data from satellites and automated weather stations in
Antarctica to make what they say is the best estimate of the continent's
temperature so far. However, there are very few weather stations on Antarctica,
and the satellite data have been available for only the past 25 years. This
troubles some scientists. "One must be very cautious with such results because
they have no real way to be validated," says atmospheric scientist John Christy
of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, who was not part of the study. "In
other words, we will never know what the temperature was over the very large
missing areas that this technique attempts to fill in so that it can be tested
back through time." Researchers had thought Antarctica was getting cooler in
part because of the ozone hole over the South Pole. This break in the protective
ozone layer brings cooling weather patterns across parts of Antarctica. Steig
agrees that the ozone hole has contributed to cooling in East Antarctica.
"However, it seems to have been assumed that the ozone hole was affecting the
entire continent, when there wasn't any evidence to support that idea, or even
any theory to support it," he adds.

Pielke Sr. Challenges New Antarctic
Study - January 21, 2009. By Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger
Pielke, Sr., senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Excerpt:
3. How do the authors reconcile the conclusions in their paper with the cooler
than average long term sea surface temperature anomalies off of the coast of
Antarctica? [see:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.15.2009.gif]. These cool
anomalies have been there for at least several years. This cool region is also
undoubtedly related to the above average Antarctic sea ice areal coverage that
has been monitored over recent years; see
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg]. 4. In
Figure 2 of their paper, much of their analyzed warming took place prior to
1980. For East Antarctica, the trend is essentially flat since 1980. The use of
a linear fit for the entire period of the record produces a larger trend than
has been seen in more recent years. In terms of the significance of their paper,
it overstates what they have obtained from their analysis. In the abstract they
write, for example, "West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1C per decade over the
past 50 years". However, even a cursory view of Figure 2 shows that since the
late 1990s, the region has been cooling in their analysis in this region. The
paper would be more balanced if they presented this result, even if they cannot
explain why.

Scientist adjusts data -- presto, Antarctic cooling
disappears - December 21, 2008: Abstract excerpt: "We use statistical climate
field reconstruction techniques to determine monthly temperature anomalies for
the near-surface of the Antarctic ice sheet since 1957. Two independent data
sets are used to provide estimates of the spatial covariance patterns of
temperature: automatic weather stations and thermal infrared satellite
observations. Quality-controlled data from occupied instrumental weather
stations are used to determine the amplitude of changes in those covariance
patterns through time. We use a modified principal component analysis technique
(Steig et al., in review, Nature) to optimize the combination of spatial and
temporal information. Verification statistics obtained from subsets of the data
demonstrate the resulting reconstructions represent improvements relative to
climatological mean values." Mann's not the only one inventing his own
"modified" PCA. Looks like Steig "got rid of" antarctic cooling the same way
Mann got rid of medieval warming. Why not just look at the station data instead
of "adjusting" it (graph above)? It shows a 50-year cooling trend.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Bruce Hall has an excellent presentation of temperature
records in the United States on his weblog "Updating Statewide Monthly
Temperature Extremes".

Among his valuable comments, he writes"The U.S.
analysis showed that the late 1990s were indeed hot and had a greater than
normal expected level of statewide monthly records. What it also showed,
however, was that the 1930s had a much higher frequency of those records.

Finally, it showed a sharp tailing off of such extremes beginning with
the new century. I have completed the review of the high temperature extremes
through 2008 and there were no additional statewide month high temperature
records. An analysis of the 2005 - 2008 data for minimum temperature records
will be started shortly."

The plain truth is that the United States is an inefficient user
of energy. For each dollar of economic product, the United States spews more
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than 75 of 107 countries tracked in the
indicators of the International Energy Agency. Those doing better include not
only cutting-edge nations like Japan but low-tech countries like Thailand and
Mexico.

The first problem with this set of claims is that the
New York Times confuses energy efficiency with carbon dioxide intensity of the
economy. The second error is that the New York Times uses market exchange rates
as the basis for evaluating U.S. carbon dioxide per dollar of GDP against other
countries, rather than the more appropriate metric of international GDP
comparisons using purchasing power parities. So the New York Times makes a
muddle of reality when it suggests that the United States is an "inefficient
user of energy" suggesting that 70% of all contries are more efficient than the
United States.

This is just wrong. Data from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration on energy consumption (BTUs) per unit of GDP (PPP) shows that the
United States is more efficient than about 68% of all countries. Similarly, the
United States emissions of carbon dioxide per unit of GDP is better than 69% of
countries.

To be sure, there are a number of countries that make
excellent models for how the United States might become more efficient and
reduce the carbon intensity of its economy, including Japan and Germany.
However, as models to emulate, Mexico and Thailand, as suggested by the Times,
are probably not the best examples.

Moreton Bay fig trees are native to the area, are amazingly
vigorous and grow to massive size -- and huge numbers of Brisbane people love
them. They are trees that inspire. The one in the first picture below is
actually rather scrawny compared to some. Such is the outcry at any proposal to
cut them down that roadworks have in the past been re-routed to avoid any need
to cut them down. But they do have their downside -- with their roots very often
clogging drains and their huge branches sometimes breaking off during storms. I
had a splendid example of a fig tree right in the front of my house until
recently and I was devastated that I had to remove it. It was just too close to
my sewer line. Getting into sewer lines is a snack for fig tree roots. So you
can see the dilemma behind the story below. My view is that it should be
permissible to remove particularly dangerous branches.

BRISBANE
residents worried about potentially dangerous trees remain in limbo as the city
council works out how to deal with them. Brisbane City Council said findings of
its tree policy review were three months away but ratepayers who contravened
present laws could be slugged thousands of dollars.

Brad Waters, of
Ascot, said he faced a $5000 fine if he so much as trimmed two giant fig trees
owned by the council, which has branches hanging over his property. He said he
feared extensive damage to his house if a storm as severe as the one that
devastated The Gap in November last year hit his area. "The limbs that represent
a hazard to my family and property are many metres off the ground and are up to
12m long," he said. "In the recent storms, two limbs sheared off and slammed to
the ground - luckily not from the parts of the trees overhanging my property.
"Council can be assured I'll be seeking damages for any damage these trees cause
to my property."

Mr Waters said he'd been trying for up to five years to
get the council to remove the danger, which was worsening as the trees grew.
"Upon making my most recent call to council, I asked for someone to make
arrangements to meet me at my property to assess the trees and to see first-hand
the reasons for my concern," he said. "Council's response was to send someone
out unannounced, who left a brochure in the letterbox indicating that council
does not 'fenceline' council trees, that council does not majorly prune trees,
and that council is not responsible for the debris caused by council
trees."

A spokesman for Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said a review of
"Labor's long-time tree policy, under which this tree is protected, has been
under way since The Gap storms". "For every request that the Lord Mayor gets to
remove a tree he gets a request to save a tree," he said. "It has always been a
difficult and contentious issue that has to be taken on a case by case basis.
"Council takes seriously all situations that could cause a threat to a property,
but we do err on the side of protecting the greenery of the
city."

Opposition Leader Shayne Sutton said the removal of dangerous or
oversized council-owned trees should be fast-tracked. "We need to be sure that
our suburbs' trees are of appropriate size and species," she said.

As the floods move slowly through the Channel
Country in southwest Queensland, the bush telegraph is experiencing its own
flood of calls. The talk is all of rainfall and river heights, and the promise
of a far more bountiful season. Many towns and properties have received more
rain in the first three weeks of 2009 than they did for all of 2008. And it is
still raining and the wet season has two more months to go.

David Brook
has been checking the river heights bulletin daily, waiting for the flood waters
to reach his Birdsville property, Adria Downs. "We have only had 53mm, but there
have been much bigger rains (in the Georgina and Diamantina river systems)," he
says. "We had some rain, nice rain, and that is good. Ninety per cent of
anyone's pastoral land is not flooded, so you still need rain. "But the 10 per
cent that can get these quite large floods can probably support 50 per cent of
the property for a period afterwards."

North of Birdsville, at Boulia on
the Burke River, which flows into the Georgina River, cattle producer and Boulia
Shire mayor Rick Britton says he has had more rain this year - 202mm - than he
had all last year. "We had 70mm in 18 months (to the end of 2008). We have
doubled that in 21 days, and the country has responded. How it is reacting is
just awesome; you can nearly hear it growing," he says. Britton is at the
southern end of the big wet. "Once you get north of us there have been falls
anywhere from (200mm to 650mm) of rain." That rain has brought relief and joy.
"You can imagine how happy they are, the pressure is off everyone now." He says
the rain is evoking memories of the big wet of 1974. "My dad was running the
property when we had the last big wet, and now he is retired. This is my first
big fair dinkum wet. We hope it is not a one-in-a-generation event."

The
Channel Country is the land of drought and flood, of boom and bust. When it
rains and the floods come down the complex braided channels and anabranches of
the system, Brook says they provide the best natural irrigation system in the
world. He said properties, if they are lucky, will get 75mm to 200mm of rain a
year. "But it is nothing compared with a section of land inundated to a metre
deep or half a metre deep for one month, or three months at a time. The benefits
from flooding are great."

The creeks and rivers of the Channel Country
have never been regulated by dams or pumped for irrigation. "A few of us out
here have argued strongly against any damming or diversion of the rivers
upstream," Brook says. He is one of 32 partners in the organic beef company, OBE
Beef. Between them, they have up to 100,000 head of cattle raised on 64,000sqkm
of organically certified pasture in the Channel Country. That business alone
means Australia has the largest organically farmed area in the world.

"We are fairly remote from any intensive agriculture, which is important
in minimising risk," Brook observes. "Generally speaking, people are
like-minded. No one wants to go down the other path of damming or heavy
intensive agriculture, or using the rivers for anything other than natural
irrigation." Brook explains the rivers and creeks are actually a series of
ponds. "Those big ponded areas, they are wide and the velocity of the river
slows and it drops the sediments, they are the really good areas for grazing."
He says rain is good, but a slow flood is better. "Once you get that some of
that country flooded for weeks, the plant life keeps coming up for months after
the flood goes. "For us, with our organic certification, it is the bee's knees.
You can't get any better." An astonishing 250 species of plants have been
identified on Brook's property.

Martin Thoms is professor of Riverine
Ecosystems at the University of Canberra. "In the dry times we walk out across
the floodplain and we see nothing but dust and dirt," he says. But that dust
harbours a huge seedbank and store of zooplankton eggs, "which are essentially
fish food". When it rains, the floodwater stimulates the release of nutrients
and carbon from the floodplain soils, seeds germinate and the eggs of
zooplankton hatch. "The productivity of that plant growth is absolutely
unbelievable," Thoms says. "Rain will stimulate plants that can grow up to 1m or
1.5m in a matter of months, particularly the native grasslands out there. The
pastoral industry is going to be loving it."

It is not just the pastoral
industry that is benefiting. The post-flood wildflowers will bring tourists, and
if the floodwaters reach Lake Eyre, there will be a local tourist boom. Thoms
says the lakes of the system are biodiversity hot spots. "All this activity in
the Channel Country is going to be really great for migrating water birds," he
says. "And that gives the floods not just local and domestic significance, but
international importance as well. "We have migratory birds coming from China,
Japan, Korea that bunny-hop all down eastern Australia through the Channel
Country, using these big floodplain systems that are now being inundated by the
rain."

The health of the Channel Country is in stark contrast to the
state of the Murray-Darling basin. Thoms says Channel Country graziers not only
understand, but embrace the natural variability of the climate. "That is why
these guys are so resilient, whereas I think in some areas of the basin we have
tried to control that variability and that hasn't always worked." He argues the
efforts to regulate and control the rivers of the Murray-Darling basin have
resulted in the ecosystems, like the lower Lakes and the Coorong, suffering.
"Rather than trying to control these highly variable rivers I think we need to
embrace their variability," he says.

The $60 billion coal industry is at risk without greater
support for clean coal, the Opposition warned yesterday after the nation's only
commercial project in the field said it would be unviable under the proposed
emissions trading scheme. The Australian revealed yesterday that ZeroGen had
warned Resources Minister Martin Ferguson that the Rudd Government's carbon
pollution reduction scheme would be a "significant barrier" to the development
of clean coal. ZeroGen is understood to have laid off or redeployed staff from
its corporate division recently. The company would not comment yesterday, but
said in a statement there had been "no reductions from project staffing, and
none are planned".

Gas suppliers say they can provide cleaner energy
than conventional coal-fired electricity for less than renewables if clean coal
is delayed. Coal industry sources warned of a bleak future without greater
support for clean coal research. "You run all your coal assets down and build
gas, and basically the coal industry is out of business," one industry watcher
said. "The only way ZeroGen will work is if someone stumps up and puts a
sizeable amount of money under it -- someone being the federal Government."

The Opposition says clean coal technology will never be developed if the
Government puts all the revenue raised from selling permits under the ETS into
compensation. "ZeroGen was the only project of its type left in the world,"
Opposition resources spokesman Ian Macfarlane said. "It was the project Kevin
Rudd was lauding as his international project. "If the Government doesn't
breathe life back into ZeroGen and the project folds, basically there is no zero
emission project in a developmental stage.

"The Government is conceding
defeat on clean coal, which not only affects the domestic industry and the price
of electricity but also says no one in the world is going to develop clean coal
technology. The future for thermal coal is bleak."

"We must get rid of the Medieval Warm period" was an
early cry from Warmists. The period concerned is of course a complete refutation
of Warmism so it had to be "got rid of" somehow. And, with his now discredited
"hockeystick" graph, Michael Mann seemed to have done it. When that came unstuck
they started to say that the period was just a "local" phenomenon. As there are
now findings that it extended to both Argentina and New Zealand, that sure is a
big locality!

Meanwhile, another big embarrassment in recent years has
been the pesky non-melting of the Antarctic icecap. All observations show it as
INCREASING in mass overall. But never fear! A way has now been found around
that! And who is in on the fix? None other than that same old statistical faker,
Michael Mann. Below is a popular report of the "research" followed by the
journal abstract.

What they have done seems pretty clear. They have used
one of the old dodges that Prof. Brignell calls "chartmanship". They
have taken a distant and unusually cold year and shown that there has been
warming since then. Utterly meaningless, of course.

US researchers
have pored over data from satellites and weather stations in the biggest ever
study of the frozen continent's climate and found it's warming after all. Barry
Brook, director of the University of Adelaide's Research Institute for Climate
Change and Sustainability, said the finding was alarming. Scientists now
estimate the melting of Antarctica's massive ice sheets will cause the world's
sea levels to rise by one to two metres by the end of the
century.....

Scientists already knew, he said, that the massive ice
sheets of western Antarctica were melting, but the study showed they would melt
more quickly. The research, contained in Thursday's issue of Nature, was also
bad news for climate change in general, Professor Brook said. It had been
thought Antarctica's cooling would help restrain global warming by acting as a
"cool pack", but this did not appear to be the case.

The US study found
that eastern Antarctica - which includes the Australian zone - is getting
cooler. But this is outweighed by western Antarctica and the Antarctic
peninsula, which are warming. On average the continent is warming, the study
found. Over the past 50 years much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate
comparable to the rest of the world.

Study co-author Eric Steig from the
University of Washington said the satellite data was revealing. "The thing you
hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case," he
told Nature. Professor Brook said it had been thought Antarctica was cooling
partly because of the hole in the ozone layer, which allowed the hot air
out.

Assessments of Antarctic temperature
change have emphasized the contrast between strong warming of the Antarctic
Peninsula and slight cooling of the Antarctic continental interior in recent
decades1. This pattern of temperature change has been attributed to the
increased strength of the circumpolar westerlies, largely in response to
changes in stratospheric ozone2. This picture, however, is substantially
incomplete owing to the sparseness and short duration of the observations.
Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic
Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger
than previously reported. West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1 øC per decade
over the past 50 years, and is strongest in winter and spring. Although this
is partly offset by autumn cooling in East Antarctica, the continent-wide
average near-surface temperature trend is positive. Simulations using a
general circulation model reproduce the essential features of the spatial
pattern and the long-term trend, and we suggest that neither can be attributed
directly to increases in the strength of the westerlies. Instead, regional
changes in atmospheric circulation and associated changes in sea surface
temperature and sea ice are required to explain the enhanced warming in West
Antarctica.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

JIM HANSEN'S/GISS TEMPERATURE TREND REVISED
DOWNWARD

Pigs are flying! An email below from Henry Geraedts
[arbutuspoint@gmail.com]

I am drawing your attention to a
significant change in GISS GHG temperature trend projections published by Jim
Hansen's team last week, and which appears to have gone largely unnoticed other
than by Lucia Liljegren on her site "The Blackboard" [
www.rankexploits.com].

At the very end of the GISS update, under para #4
in the next to last paragraph, Hansen & Co state that: "From climate models
and empirical analyses this GHG forcing translates into a mean warming rate of
0.15C per decade". Given that Jim Hansen is one of the leading and vocal
proponents of the AGW/ACC hypothesis, that the GISS temperature data series has
yet again come close scrutiny recently [Lubos Motl, et. al] and that GISS
temperature data is increasingly at odds with satellite data [ref: today's
posting on that subject at www.wattsupwiththat.com ] this revision is singularly
noteworthy: the revised GISS GHG driven temperature trend is a whopping 25%
lower than the IPCC's [95% certain] "gold standard" of 0.20C per decade.

Absent a GISS press release advising all of us of this change [which
clearly would have been expecting too much], I thought you and your readers
would find this of interest.

SCIENCE VERSUS THE
WARMISTS

Excerpt from an email from Roy Tucker
[gpobs@mindspring.com]

A hypothesis that stubbornly refuses to be
disproven may even be dignified by calling it a "theory". To assert that
anything is a "fact" or "proven" is very risky. Consider the example of Newton's
"Laws of Motion". Repeated experiment and successful use of these "laws" in
mechanics and the description of the motion of celestial bodies gave physicists,
engineers, and artillerymen great confidence that the velocity of a body was a
simple function of the force applied to it and the duration of that force.
Newton's laws became accepted as a proven fact. That is, until Einstein began to
ponder what happens as the body's velocity began to approach the speed of light.
According to his 'hypothesis', it is the momentum of an object that increases as
long as a force is applied to it. Newton's Laws are but the low-speed
approximations of Einstein's relativistic expressions. Is Einstein's Theory of
Relativity a fact? Is it proven? Not if some experiment in the future falsifies
it and leads to an even better understanding of how the universe
works.

My education has been in science and engineering. I have a great
reverence for the Scientific Method because I know the history of how humanity
has laboriously, painfully gained the body of knowledge upon which our
civilzation is founded. The Scientific Method has been our most powerful tool in
learning how the universe works. There is one very important thing required of
those who would seek knowledge by means of the Scientific Method and that is
honesty. If one cannot report the results of observation accurately, how can
ignorance be dispelled? How can a hypothesis be falsified?

Climate
science has become politicized. People who profess to be practitioners of
science are using the authority of their offices to assert that "the debate is
over" and "the science is settled" when it never is in the proper conduct of
Science. People who claim to be educators of the public dismiss inconvenient
facts and propagandize in support of the "politically correct"
dogma.

Indeed I did. I
consider it an excellent example of the environmentalist propaganda pervading
the media these days that seeks to persuade scientifically unsophisticated
readers that anthropogenic global warming is absolutely a fact and we must all
sacrifice our hopes and dreams to "save the planet" from a hellish future. It
was quite a remarkable screed, a recounting of all of humanity's alleged
enviromental sins, totally devoid of any real discussion of scientific issues or
comparison of competing explanations of climate variability. This is a
continuing pattern since Mr. Appell has also written in defense of the
thoroughly discredited Michael Mann "Hockey Stick" temperature curve and has
claimed that the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age were localized
events.

Let us compare two of the current competing explanations of
climate variability: Anthropogenic Global Warming as the result of human
combustion of fossil fuels and the Svensmark hypothesis that suggests solar
activity and the galactic cosmic ray environment modulates cloud formation in
the lower atmosphere and therefore the earth's albedo.

In its early
documents, the IPCC asserted that solar activity is of no significance in
determining earth's climate and has concentrated on claiming that increasing
levels of CO2 raise the temperature of the earth by reducing the radiation of
thermal infrared energy. Computer models have been concocted that supposedly
support this hypothesis. These computer models are tremendously simplistic
compared to the complexity of the actual climate system of the earth. They do
not reproduce some of the very robust oscillatory variations of the earth's
climate such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the El Nino - Southern
Oscillation. If they are run backwards, they fail to accurately reproduce past
climate states. They predict a warming of the equatorial mid-troposphere but
such warming is not seen. Those who argue in favor of the AGW hypothesis use the
output of these models as if it was real data and ignore the actual measurements
from satellite microwave radiometers which show no warming at all in spite of
the increasing abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Svensmark's
hypothesis says that as solar activity declines the interplanetary magnetic
field weakens and galactic cosmic rays penetrate more deeply into the inner
solar system and eventually into the lower atmosphere of earth where they
produce cloud-seeding ions. These ions promote a greater abundance of clouds,
raising the earth's reflectivity and reducing the warming of the surface of the
earth by sunlight. Solar activity has been falling in recent years.

Today, the 19th of January, a small sunspot was seen near the sun's
equator, an indication that it may be a remnant of the old Cycle 23. If so, then
Cycle 23 is 19 years old. Long cycles precede weak cycles, suggesting continued
low solar activity. The interplanetary magnetic Ap index is the lowest that it
has been in many years (See here)
and the neutron count from cosmic rays has increased (See here) as
expected. The earth's temperature has been either steady or declining for the
past eight years. Based upon the data, there is more falsification of the AGW
hypothesis than of the Svensmark solar activity hypothesis.

Mr. Appell,
the above is an example of real "science writing". I have presented an
explanation of the Scientific Method and I have presented information about two
conflicting hypotheses in an effort to educate the readers so that they may make
better decisions. Any presentation of "Gloom-and-Doom" has been with regard to
the politicization of Science and is indisputably a valid concern. I encourage
you to return to the practice of science writing instead of environmental
propagandizing. You would better serve your
readers.

Energy
Security and Global Warming are analysed as 21st century sustainability threats.
Best estimates of future energy availability are derived as an Energy Reference
Case (ERC). An explicit economic growth model is used to interpret the impact of
the ERC on economic growth. The model predicts a divergence from 20th century
equilibrium conditions in economic growth and socio-economic welfare is only
stabilised under optimistic assumptions that demands a paradigm shift in
contemporary economic thought and focused attention from policy
makers.

Fossil fuel depletion also constrains the maximum extent of
Global Warming. Carbon emissions from the ERC comply nominally with the B1
scenario, which is the lowest emissions case considered by the IPCC. The IPCC
predicts a temperature response within acceptance limits of the Global Warming
debate for the B1 scenario. The carbon feedback cycle, used in the IPCC models,
is shown as invalid for low-emissions scenarios and an alternative carbon cycle
reduces the temperature response for the ERC considerably compared to the IPCC
predictions.

Our analysis proposes that the extent of
Global Warming may be acceptable and preferable compared to the socio-economic
consequences of not exploiting fossil fuel reserves to their full technical
potential.

1. Introduction

A paradox of global dimensions
faces humankind. While energy constraints pose a threat to the global economy,
continued extraction and combustion of fossil fuels at current, or increased,
rates is now accepted to be the dominant driver of Global Warming (IPCC, 2007a,
p. 136). The development and expansion of alternative energy sources has proven
challenging, hence the reluctance of certain major countries to endorse the
Kyoto Protocol on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, notably the USA
(UNFCCC, 2008).

Long-term structural scarcity in energy supplies is
unprecedented in modern history. To this end, there is no established economic
growth theory that explicitly describes the impacts of such energy constraints.
Despite awareness that fossil fuel resources are exhaustible, there is no
globally accepted benchmark of resource availability for long-term planning
purposes. Energy is commonly treated as a limitless exogenous input to economic
planning with the result that energy demand is well defined, but disconnected
from the physical and logistical realities of supply.

In like manner, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified exponential
increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 as the dominant forcing agent for
global warming (IPCC, 2007a, p. 136), with the dominant contributor of man-made
CO2 emissions being the burning of fossil fuel (IPCC, 2007a, p. 512). However,
the range of scenarios presented for climate futures are not constrained by the
possibility that the quantity of recoverable fossil carbon may rule out certain
scenarios as physically unrealisable.

The exhaustion of oil and gas
commodities has been extensively analysed by Peak Oil proponents (ASPO, 2008).
The scientific and deductive merits of Peak Oil theory are well established -
the World Energy Council endorses the methodology, declaring the ASPO model as
"plausible" (WEC, 2007, pp. 45-53). Nevertheless, much uncertainty is still
being expressed in the understanding of both the phenomena of Peak Oil and
Global Warming:

... a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow
the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet
to be developed. (IPCC, 2007a, p. 640)

...most would appear to agree that
peak oil output is not very far away for all of us. It could take place sometime
within the next decade or so... (Ghanem, 2006)

The principles of Peak Oil
theory are applied in this paper to derive an Energy Reference Case (ERC) for
the total recoverable reserves of all fossil fuels - liquid, gas and solid. The
roles of nuclear and renewable energy sources are also considered in the ERC, to
present an integrated energy future. A comparative assessment of the
socio-economic threats triggered alternately by energy scarcity, or by Global
Warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuel, is performed in the context of
the ERC. The paper thereby facilitates a multidisciplinary synthesis between
some of the most important sustainability threats to human society, and
motivates a resolution to the paradox posed in the opening paragraph.

As
there is still substantial disagreement on the magnitude of geological energy
reserves and recoverable resources, the ERC and consequent analysis are likely
to be criticised by both energy pessimists and optimists. Nevertheless, we argue
that the methods for estimating the total recoverable reserves that we apply to
global fossil fuel reserves are robust and are validated by previous case
studies. We further argue that these estimates provide stark alternatives that
must be considered in deciding how to address the combined challenges of climate
change and the ultimate decline of the global carbon-based energy economy.
Although the existence of other sustainability threats such as food security,
water stress and epidemic diseases are acknowledged, they are beyond the scope
of this paper. [...]

44%
OF AMERICANS SAY GLOBAL WARMING DUE TO PLANETARY TRENDS, NOT HUMAN
ACTIVITY

Al Gore's side may be coming to power in Washington, but they
appear to be losing the battle on the idea that humans are to blame for glob al
warming.

Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters now say long-term
planetary trends are the cause of global warming, compared to 41% who blame it
on human activity.

Seven percent (7%) attribute global warming to some
other reason, and nine percent (9%) are unsure in a new Rasmussen Reports
national telephone survey.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democrats blame
global warming on human activity, compared to 21% percent of Republicans.
Two-thirds of GOP voters (67%) see long-term planetary trends as the cause
versus 23% of Democrats. Voters not affiliated with either party by eight points
put the blame on planetary trends.

In July 2006, 46% of voters said
global warming is caused primarily by human activities, while 35% said it is due
to long-term planetary trends.

In April of last year, 47% of Americans
blamed human activity versus 34% who viewed long-term planetary trends as the
culprit. But the numbers have been moving in the direction of planetary trends
since then.

Heartland Institute media
monitors have noted on several occasions that climate-change alarmists are
finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their position that human activity
has warmed Earth to crisis proportions. Polar bears keep growing in numbers,
Antarctic ice keeps expanding, deserts keep receding, temperatures keep easing,
the ranks of science skeptics keep multiplying. It's tough to scare people with
that kind of sound-science evidence.

Now the folk at DeSmogblog - created
like so many alarmist sites for the sole purpose of attacking conservatives,
libertarians and global warming skeptics - is getting really worried. DeSmogblog
toted up the 2008 online battle this way: References to "global warming" and
"hoax" soared 125 percent to 49,719 citations in 2008; GW and "lie" jumped 101
percent to 100,770; "alarmist" increased 97 percent to 27,298, and "skeptic"
(our favorite) rose 93 percent to 73,956 citations. "We're also seeing more
people than ever using the internet as their main source of news and
information," DeSmogblog posted recently. "Legislators are going to be very hard
pressed to implement strict new greenhouse gas regulations if almost a majority
of the public believes that climate change has nothing to do with human
activity."

(Madison, Wisconsin) In the state capital of
Madison, a city of academicians and politicians plush with ideology and someone
else's money, global warming hysteria is the zeitgeist and environmental
sustainability is the road to utopia. According to the "Broad Strategies"
section of a meeting agenda recently posted on the City of Madison Web site, an
ordinance being considered would force city zoning to account for and mitigate
climate change:

10. Zoning should adapt to meet the demands of climate change; use
zoning to address or mitigate effects, or adapt to climate change; remove any
barriers to mitigating the effects, adapting to climate change (trees, green
space, mobility, renewable energy, land use).

Another item in
the "Broad Strategies" section has a grim outlook for the future. It includes a
proposal that spells out a doomsday scenario - allowing for the city to function
should shortages in energy and food occur:

11. Write the code to allow the city to function when automobile
travel will be severely limited and oil-related products, including food and
heating fuel, become prohibitively expensive because of the scarcity and
high-cost of fuel.

Other proposals throughout the document would
push for use of alternative energies (solar, geothermal and wind), conservation,
electric cars and urban agriculture. Other more Draconian regulations throughout
the document would:

- Limit waterfront development in the name of water
sustainability,

- Require two trees to be planted if one is removed
from your property

- Limit the "number/density of fast food outlets and
drive-through windows" in the name of public health

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A PERSPECTIVE FROM CANADA ON THE GLOBAL
WARMING DEBATE

An email from Norm Kalmanovitch [kalhnd@shaw.ca], a
practicing geophysicist with over 35 years of experience

Apart from
common sense, the only other aspect totally absent from the global warming
debate is "global warming" itself. There is talk of emissions reductions, carbon
trading, and even drowning polar bears; but there is no talk about actual
current global temperature increases with the continuous increase in global CO2
emissions.

The December 2008 temperature data confirms that 2008 was the
coldest year of the last decade, adding one more year to the cooling trend that
started after 2002.

Common sense would dictate that after six years of
cooling with only one year, 2005, being warmer than the previous year, the
"global warming" debate would be over and the world would now be debating
"global cooling" in earnest.

Apparently common sense was never part of
this debate even when the globe was actually warming. Clouds block about 20% of
the 1368W/m2 of solar radiation. If cloud cover decreased and only blocked out
19% of the solar radiation or cloud cover increased and blocked out 21% of the
solar radiation these 5% changes in cloud cover would equate to 13.68W/m2 of
either heating or cooling.

AGW is based on computer models that attribute
forcing of just 3.71W/m2 to a doubling of CO2 from the 280ppmv, and somehow this
is more likely to drive climate than a 5% change in cloud cover.

The
actual physical properties of CO2 interacting with the thermal spectrum radiated
by the Earth, dictate that far less than 10% of this 3.71W/m2 is even physically
possible. Remarkably, the world is committing economic suicide, starving the
poor and ignoring real pollution problems, because an environmentalist lobby has
convinced the world leaders that it is more likely that 0.371W/m2 from CO2
emissions will cause catastrophic warming of the Earth, than 13.68W/m2 from a 5%
increase in cloud cover can cause serious cooling of the Earth.

The
global climate models all state that we should be on a warming trend. The global
temperature data sets all show that we are on a cooling trend.The debate is
now called "climate change" to avoid any reference to global temperature and the
issue is somehow elevated to a level of such great importance that countries are
actually debating whether to adhere to the dictates of the Kyoto Protocol for
the purpose of stopping the now non-existent global warming, or save their
countries economies using "Kyoto unfriendly" energy
sources.

Princeton professor denies global warming
theory

Physics professor William Happer GS '64 has some tough words
for scientists who believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming. "This
is George Orwell. This is the `Germans are the master race. The Jews are the
scum of the earth.' It's that kind of propaganda," Happer, the Cyrus Fogg
Brackett Professor of Physics, said in an interview. "Carbon dioxide is not a
pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon
dioxide. To say that that's a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be
science has turned into a cult."

Happer served as director of the Office
of Energy Research in the U.S. Department of Energy under President George H.W.
Bush and was subsequently fired by Vice President Al Gore, reportedly for his
refusal to support Gore's views on climate change. He asked last month to be
added to a list of global warming dissenters in a Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee report. The list includes more than 650 experts who challenge
the belief that human activity is contributing to global warming

Though
Happer has promulgated his skepticism in the past, he requested to be named a
skeptic in light of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, whose
administration has, as Happer notes, "stated that carbon dioxide is a pollutant"
and that humans are "poisoning the atmosphere."

Happer maintains that he
doubts there is any strong anthropogenic influence on global temperature. "All
the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past
warmings. In fact, it's not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has
little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with
carbon dioxide," Happer explained.

Happer is chair of the board of
directors at the George C. Marshall Institute, a nonprofit conservative think
tank known for its attempts to highlight uncertainties about causes of global
warming. The institute was founded by former National Academy of Sciences
president and prominent physicist Frederick Seitz GS '34, who publicly expressed
his skepticism of the claim that global warming is caused by human activity.
Seitz passed away in March 2008. In 2007, the Institute reported $726,087 in
annual operating expenses, $205,156 of which was spent on climate change issues,
constituting the largest portion of its program expenses, according to its I-990
tax exemption form.

In a statement sent to the Senate as part of his
request, Happer explained his reasoning for challenging the climate change
movement, citing his research and scientific knowledge. "I have spent a long
research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse
effect, for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation,
and fluid flow," he said in the statement. "Based on my experience, I am
convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is
mistaken."

Geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer, the lead author of
the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -
whose members, along with Gore, received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize - said in an
interview that Happer's claims are "simply not true." Oppenheimer, director of
the Wilson School's Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy,
stressed that the preponderance of evidence and majority of expert opinion
points to a strong anthropogenic influence on rising global temperatures, noting
that he advises Happer to read the IPCC's report and publish a scientific report
detailing his objections to its findings.

The University is home to a
number of renowned climate change scientists. Ecology and evolutionary biology
professor Stephen Pacala and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor
Robert Socolow, who are co-chairs of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) and
the Princeton Environmental Institute, developed a set of 15 "stabilization
wedges." These are existing technologies that would, by the year 2054, each
prevent 1 billion tons of carbon emissions. They argue that the implementation
of seven of these wedges would be needed to reach target emissions levels.
Neither Pacala nor Socolow could be reached for comment.

Happer said that
he is alarmed by the funding that climate change scientists, such as Pacala and
Socolow, receive from the private sector. "Their whole career depends on
pushing. They have no other reason to exist. I could care less. I don't get a
dime one way or another from the global warming issue," Happer noted. "I'm not
on the payroll of oil companies as they are. They are funded by BP." The CMI has
had a research partnership with BP since 2000 and receives $2 million each year
from the company. In October, BP announced that it would extend the partnership
- which had been scheduled to expire in 2010 - by five years.

The
Marshall Institute, however, has received at least $715,000 from the ExxonMobil
Foundation and Corporate Giving division from 1998 to 2006, according to the
company's public reports. Though Exxon has challenged the scientific models for
proving the human link to climate change in the past, its spokesmen have said
that the company's stance has been misunderstood. Others say the company has
changed its stance.

Happer explained that his beliefs about climate
change come from his experience at the Department of Energy, at which Happer
said he supervised all non-weapons energy research, including climate change
research. Managing a budget of more than $3 billion, Happer said he felt
compelled to make sure it was being spent properly. "I would have [researchers]
come in, and they would brief me on their topics," Happer explained. "They would
show up. Shiny faces, presentation ready to go. I would ask them questions, and
they would be just delighted when you asked. That was true of almost every group
that came in."

The exceptions were climate change scientists, he said.
"They would give me a briefing. It was a completely different experience. I
remember one speaker who asked why I wanted to know, why I asked that question.
So I said, you know I always ask questions at these briefings . I often get a
much better view of [things] in the interchange with the speaker," Happer said.
"This guy looked at me and said, `What answer would you like?' I knew I was in
trouble then. This was a community even in the early 1990s that was being turned
political. [The attitude was] `Give me all this money, and I'll get the answer
you like.' " Happer said he is dismayed by the politicization of the issue and
believes the community of climate change scientists has become a veritable
"religious cult," noting that nobody understands or questions any of the
science.

He noted in an interview that in the past decade, despite what
he called "alarmist" claims, there has not only not been warming, there has in
fact been global cooling. He added that climate change scientists are unable to
use models to either predict the future or accurately model past events. "There
was a baseball sage who said prediction is hard, especially of the future, but
the implication was that you could look at the past and at least second-guess
the past," Happer explained. "They can't even do that."

Happer cited an
ice age at the time of the American Revolution, when Londoners skated on the
Thames, and warm periods during the Middle Ages, when settlers were able to farm
southern portions of Greenland, as evidence of naturally occurring fluctuations
that undermine the case for anthropogenic influence. "[Atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentration] was exactly the same then. It didn't change at all," he
explained. "So there was something that was making the earth warm and cool that
modelers still don't really understand."

The problem does not in fact
exist, he said, and society should not sacrifice for nothing. "[Climate change
theory has] been extremely bad for science. It's going to give science a really
bad name in the future," he said. "I think science is one of the great triumphs
of humankind, and I hate to see it dragged through the mud in an episode like
this."

If the world is to tackle the climate threat, the US
President-elect must beef up his country's emissions targets, the head of the
leading intergovernmental organisation of climate scientists said last week (15
January). "President-elect Obama's goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by
2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge
of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of
climate change," said Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at a Worldwatch Institute event.

In a new
study on the state of the world in 2009, the institute argues that global CO2
emissions must be reduced to negative figures by 2050 to avoid a looming climate
catastrophe. It calls on the US, a major polluter, to assume leadership by
passing national climate legislation and engaging with the international
community to achieve a new agreement on halting emissions at next December's
talks in Copenhagen. "The world is desperately looking for US leadership to slow
emissions and create a green economy," said Christopher Flavin, president of the
Worldwatch Institute. "With the Copenhagen climate conference rapidly
approaching, this will be a crucial early test for President
Obama."

Pachauri warned that there may not be an "adequate global
response" unless the US steps up to the plate. "He ran for the presidency of the
United States, so he assumed the responsibility," the Nobel Prize recipient
commented as to the weight of Obama's task.

Meanwhile, in a hearing last
week, Steven Chu, Obama's designated secretary of energy, told the US Senate he
believed the incoming president's plan for emission reductions was "aggressive".
It includes a greater commitment to renewable energies and promotion of energy
efficiency, as well as a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases and continued
development of nuclear power. He stated the plan would set the US on the right
path to "a better energy and environmental future," while creating new jobs and
restoring US leadership in energy technology.

In recent years, most
initiatives on climate protection have come from the EU, which set the standards
with its emissions trading scheme. Obama has, however, been touted for his more
stringent targets and commitment to engaging in international climate
negotiations after the Bush administration failed to sign the Kyoto
protocol.

In a keynote speech to the Senate, Hillary Clinton, Obama's
nominee for secretary of state, emphasised that she would "renew America's
leadership through diplomacy". She said America would lead both at home and
abroad on climate issues, by participating in the UN climate conference to
develop a coordinated international response and by pursuing a low-carbon energy
policy.

The dispute between Russia and Ukraine which has cut the flow
of Russian natural gas to Europe has so alarmed governments that even German
politicians are openly discussing the advantages of nuclear energy. 'It's
increasingly becoming apparent that we have to lay greater emphasis on resources
available in Germany,' German Economics Minister Michael Glos said earlier this
month. 'I want to draw attention to the fact that we still have a number of
nuclear power stations in Germany which, unfortunately, are going to be turned
off in a few years just for political reasons.' On Monday in Brussels, he was
seconded by one of his state secretaries, Peter Hintze, who told a meeting of
European Union energy ministers, 'We need to take another calm look at the
atomic energy issue, which is currently on hold.'

The German government
is bound by a 1999 agreement to shut down the country's nuclear power stations
by 2020, but the cessation of deliveries of Russian natural gas to Europe
because of gas crisis has provoked deep concerns regarding over-dependency on a
single source of energy. 'What we are experiencing in supply breakdowns did not
occur even during the many decades of the Cold War,' Heintze complained.

The gas crisis has struck a particularly sensitive nerve in central and
Eastern Europe, especially in those countries dependent on Russian natural gas
for most of their energy needs, such as Slovakia and Bulgaria. Leaders of both
countries have now vowed to restart old, unsafe Soviet-style nuclear reactors if
gas deliveries did not resume soon. 'We consider restarting (the reactor) as
extraordinarily actual and acute. When a critical moment occurs we will make the
step,' Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said. Bulgaria and Slovakia had shut
down their old nuclear reactors as part of their EU accession agreements. The
Slovak declaration provoked outrage in neighbouring Austria. And on Wednesday
the European Commission threatened to launch an infringement procedure which
could lead to fines.

However, the Czech Republic - which is less
dependent on Russian gas than its neighbours - appears to be planning to expand
its use of nuclear energy, despite the moratorium on the construction of new
nuclear reactors that was part of Prague's EU accession agreement, the daily
Hospodarske Noviny reported on Friday. This is a policy turnaround by the Green
Party-ruled Environment Ministry, the paper writes, as the ministry had
previously opposed any move in this direction. One of the reasons is the gas
crisis.

France, which derives nearly 80 per cent of its energy from its
58 nuclear reactors, is looking prophetic now. The French chose atomic energy
after the oil crisis of the 1970s. 'The French must be delighted that the
country didn't bet only on gas when we see what is happening with the gas,' the
head of French energy supplier EDF, Pierre Gadonneix, said on French radio last
week.

EDF and other European utilities, notably the German energy giants
E.ON and RWE, are investing heavily in nuclear energy in Europe, with projects
in Britain and Finland. However, Susanne Nies, a senior research fellow with the
energy program at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), said
that nuclear energy was not the best response to the gas crisis. 'Nuclear energy
could play an important part of a diversification of energy sources in Europe,'
she said.

Americans were
today shivering as bitter arctic winds caused temperatures to plunge to
record-breaking levels in many parts of the vast country. There are even fears
that crowds planning to watch Barack Obama's presidential inauguration next week
could suffer hypothermia and frostbite in sub-zero conditions.

This
winter has been one of the toughest in decades with temperatures today reaching
as low as -38C in large areas of the Midwest and -40C in the coldest place. But
even on the east coast - where conditions are typically milder than the fridgid
hinterlands - the icy blast was being felt.

New York endured a -14C chill
today and further south Washington - which hosts Mr Obama's inauguration on
Tuesday - plunged to 11 degrees below zero. Some places have recorded record
lows - with the temperature in Flint, Michigan dipping to an incredible
-28C.

New Research by an
Australian-based scientists Ellen Nisbet has found that in fact plants do not
produce greenhouse methane gas. These findings destroy a central plank of the
climate change theory.

The scientific theory that plants produce methane
was published in the international science journal Nature three years ago,
forcing a rethink of the possible sources of greenhouse gas.

Methane is
more than 20 times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Its main sources include natural gas fields, landfills, cattle, bogs and
decaying organic waste.

A 2006 study by German scientist Frank Keppler
asserted that tropical rain forests were emitting large amounts of methane. Dr
Nisbet, who was studying at Cambridge University at the time, was sceptical when
she saw Dr Keppler's results.

Evolutionary biologist Nisbet working with
12 scientists, including her father, atmospheric chemist Euan Nisbet, found that
plants do not carry the right genes to produce methane, but merely filter the
gas when it's contained in soil and dissolved in water.

"When we grew
plants under very controlled conditions we found no, they don't produce methane.
They don't have the right genes to make methane. We know what the genes are and
they're definitely not there."

Dr Nisbet lectures in life Sciences at
the University of South Australia said the team found that plants absorbed
methane dissolved in water and soil, and then secreted it into the air. The
research has been published this week in Transactions of the Royal Society in
Britian.

Monday, January 19, 2009

An email from Tom V. Segalstad
[v.segalstad@nhm.uio.no] -- Head, and Associate Professor of Resource- and
Environmental Geology Geological Museum, Natural History Museum, University of
Oslo

A recent
peer-reviewed study in the international scientific journal "Geology" by two
Danish geologists supports the Svensmark Climate Theory. They have found that
there is a correlation between the intensity of the geomagnetic field and the
precipitation in the Tropics. The only way this can be explained, the authors
say, is by the same mechanism as in the Svensmark Climate Theory; that solar
modulation of galactic ray particles has an influence on condensation nuclei for
clouds, which in turn will modulate the insolation and the surface temperature
on the Earth. A similar mechanism as in the well-known Wilson's
Fog Chamber

A published letter below from James A. Marusek
[tunga@custom.net] -- Nuclear Physicist & Engineer. U.S. Department of the
Navy, retired.

Each morning I turn on my computer and check to see
how the sun is doing today. For much of 2008, I was greeted with the message
"The sun is blank - no sunspots." We are at the verge of the next solar cycle,
solar cycle 24. How intense will this cycle be? Why is this question important?
Because the sun is a major force controlling natural climate change on
Earth.

The sun has gone very quite as it transitions to Solar Cycle 24.
There were 266 spotless days (days without sunspots) in 2008. This breaks all
standing records back to the year 1913, which had 311 spotless days.

The
Ap index is a proxy measurement for the intensity of solar magnetic activity as
it alters the geomagnetic field on Earth. Anthony Watts (meteorologist) referred
to it as the common yardstick for solar magnetic activity. This solar minimum is
smashing these records. The lowest monthly Ap index recorded since measurements
began in January 1932 is "4". This low occurred on three occasions: December
1997, November & December 2008. This current solar minimum has smashed the
lower records for Ap index for any 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 consecutive month
period and then some.

The most likely outcome is that the current solar
minimum will produce around 1,000 cumulative spotless days and that solar cycle
24 is making a state change reverting back to the old cycles (solar cycles
10-15, years 1856 to 1923). For much of the past century (solar cycles 16-23),
the solar minimums produced significantly fewer spotless days. The average was
362.

But there is always the possibility that the sun's magnetic field
could weaken even further ushering in a grand minima such as the Maunder Minimum
(1645-1715) or the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830). If that happens, then Earth's
temperature would nosedive dropping to mini Ice Age conditions. Ice skating on
the Ohio River anyone! A grand minima would also likely increase the frequency
of Caribbean and Atlantic hurricanes. The British Navy recorded more than twice
as many major land-falling Caribbean hurricanes in the last part of the Little
Ice Age (1700-1850) than during the much-warmer last half of the 20th
century.

IN NOMINATING John
Holdren to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy -- the
position known informally as White House science adviser -- President-elect
Barack Obama has enlisted an undisputed Big Name among academic
environmentalists, one "with a resume longer than your arm," as Newsweek's
Sharon Begley exulted when the announcement was made. Holdren is a physicist, a
professor of environmental policy at Harvard, a former president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the director of the Woods Hole
Research Center, and the author or co-author of many papers and books. He is
also a doom-and-gloomer with a trail of erroneous apocalyptic forecasts dating
back nearly 40 years -- and a decided lack of tolerance for environmental
opinions that conflict with his.

The position of science adviser requires
Senate confirmation. Holdren's nomination is likely to sail through, but
conscientious senators might wish to ask him some questions. Here are
eight:

1. You were long associated with population alarmist Paul Ehrlich,
and joined him in predicting disasters that never came to pass. For example, you
and Ehrlich wrote in 1969: "It cannot be emphasized enough that if . . .
population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all
the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come." In
1971, the two of you were adamant that "some form of ecocatastrophe, if not
thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the
century." In the 1980s, Ehrlich quoted your expectation that "carbon
dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year
2020." What have you learned from the failure of these prophecies to come
true?

2. You have advocated the "long-term desirability of zero
population growth" for the United States. In 1973, you pronounced the US
population of 210 million as "too many" and warned that "280 million in 2040 is
likely to be much too many." The US population today is 304 million. Are there
too many Americans?

3. You opposed the Reagan administration's military
buildup in the 1980s for fear it might "increase the belligerency of the Soviet
government." You pooh-poohed any notion that "the strain of an accelerated arms
race will do more damage to the Soviet economy than to our own," or that
"damaging the Soviet economy would benefit the US." But that is exactly what
happened, and President Reagan's defense buildup helped win the Cold War. Did
that outcome alter your thinking on military questions?

4. You argued
that "a massive campaign must be launched ... to de-develop the United States"
in order to conserve energy; you also recommended the "de-development" of modern
industrialized nations in order to facilitate growth in underdeveloped
countries. Yet elsewhere you observed: "Affordable energy in ample quantities is
the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic
development of the others." Which is it?

5. In Scientific American, you
recently wrote: "The ongoing disruption of the Earth's climate by man-made
greenhouse gases is already well beyond dangerous and is careening toward
completely unmanageable." An interview you gave to the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists was headlined "The Sky Is Falling." Given your record with
forecasting calamity, shouldn't policymakers view your alarm with a degree of
skepticism?

6. In 2006, according to the London Times, you suggested that
global sea levels could rise 13 feet by the end of this century. But the latest
assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that sea levels
are likely to have risen only 13 inches by 2100. Can you explain the discrepancy
between your estimate and the IPCC's?

7. "Variability has been the
hallmark of climate over the millennia," you wrote in 1977. "The one statement
about future climate that can be made with complete assurance is that it will be
variable." If true, should we not be wary of ascribing too much importance to
human influence on climate change?

8. You are withering in your contempt
for researchers who are unconvinced that human activity is responsible for
global warming, or that global warming is an onrushing disaster. You have
written that such ideas are "dangerous," that those who hold them "infest" the
public discourse, and that paying any attention to their views is "a menace."
You contributed to a published assault on Bjorn Lomborg's notable 2001 book "The
Skeptical Environmentalist" -- an attack the Economist described as "strong on
contempt and sneering, but weak on substance." In light of President-elect
Obama's insistence that "promoting science" means "protecting free and open
inquiry," will you work to soften your hostility toward scholars who disagree
with you?

Conservative pundits and talk radio hosts have had
a field day citing Carol Browner's ties to the Commission for a Sustainable
World Society, which is part of the Socialist International. Browner, who headed
the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, has been named
by Barack Obama to be his Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate
Change (or "Climate Czar"). This new and undefined office could give her broad
influence over economic policy. The San Francisco Chronicle reported January
14th that "some on Capitol Hill predict that energy policy will be driven not by
[Energy Secretary-Designate Steven] Chu, but by Carol Browner."

In its
coverage of Browner, the American Spectator was correct to note, "There's a
tendency of conservatives to carelessly toss about the `S' word." Indeed, the
term "socialism" was so overused (and misused) n the last days of the
presidential campaign, and during the debate on rescuing the banks and auto
industry, that it may have lost all credence with the public. But in the case of
Browner, it is accurate, and the ideology is dangerous because it now hides
behind the environmental movement it created decades ago.

Where there is
Green, there is Red. The environmental movement was an offshoot of the New Left.
The first Earth Day was held in the United States on April 22, 1970, the idea
having been conceived the previous September at a conference in Seattle,
Washington. 1969 was also the year that San Francisco made the first Earth Day
Proclamation. The New Left is associated in the public mind mainly with the
antiwar movement, which hit its peak in 1970 with campus riots against the U.S.
raids into communist base camps in Cambodia. The desire to see the United States
lose in Vietnam and retreat from world affairs in disgrace was only part of the
larger vision of a completely transformed American society. A radically new kind
of society was advocated that would abandon the culture of growth and affluence
which underpinned an "imperialist" foreign policy.

In 1973 appeared E.
F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered which
quickly became required reading on the Left. Schumacher argued "The optimal
pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means
of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great
pressure and strain....people satisfying their needs by means of a modest means
of a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other's
throats than people depending on a high rate of use."

A survey of the
new "radical political economics" appeared in 1974 in the left-wing Journal of
Economic Issues, which was itself only founded in 1967. Authors Raymond S.
Franklin and William K. Tabb wrote, "Radical economists go beyond mere
modification of the growth preoccupation; they see further growth of the kind
that presently characterizes U.S. society as detrimental to the well-being of
the American people." The antipathy to growth predates any theory about climate
change, rather, environmental issues were conjured up to serve the ideological
program of the Left.

The Green movement was necessary to solve the
problem that socialism could not, expanding output to raise living standards.
Capitalism is an unmatched engine of growth. The commercial and industrial
revolutions it powered built the Western world and gave it the global dominance
the hatred of which has become the central organizing tenet of the Left.
Socialist central planning and state enterprises have never been able to
outperform the system of private production for profit. And most serious
socialist thinkers know this. The idea has always been for the socialists to
seize control of an already developed capitalist economy and then simply
redistribute the wealth it had created in a more "equitable" manner. Creating
new wealth after the revolution was known to be problematic.

It was
assumed by Karl Marx and his successors that the first socialist revolution
would occur in Germany, the most advanced European economy with the most wealth
to spread around. When the revolution came in relatively backward Russia,
Vladimir Lenin attempted his New Economic Policy to allow private growth to take
place until it reached a point where the socialists could intervene. As Lenin
said when he announced the NEP in 1921, "highly developed capitalist countries
where wage-workers in industry and agriculture make up the vast majority....Only
in countries where this class is sufficiently developed is it possible to pass
directly from capitalism to socialism." Neither Lenin nor Josef Stalin was able
to build an advanced economy on a par with the rival capitalist states. And
despite Nikita Khrushchev's claim that socialism would "bury" capitalism, the
American Cold War containment strategy was based on the inherent inability of
socialism to prosper. The Soviet Union cracked when it was unable to muster the
resources needed to meet the challenge posed by President Ronald Reagan.

But what if a socialist economy did not need to grow? What if the basic
economic problem, how to meet the insatiable wants of the public for an ever
higher standard of living, could be tossed aside? This would be the concept of
Full Communism laid out by Professor Emeritus P. J. D. Wiles of the University
of London in the Marxian Economics volume of the New Palgrave Dictionary of
Economics (1990). Under Full Communism, "productivity is higher than wants and
everyone can help himself in the warehouses (not shops!)." This perfect state is
"only possible because wants have been reduced to needs." It is not output that
has grown, but desires that have been scaled back State authority "must be
conducting the propaganda that persuades people to internalize the new value
system."

For 40 years, the Left has been propagandizing the public to do
without, but without success. The history of humanity has been the pursuit of a
better life, which does not mean shivering in the winter when one can turn up
the heat, or walking when one can ride (or fly). So where the joys of the simple
life fail to persuade, the wrath of the gods will be summoned. First, it was the
"limits to growth." There simply wasn't enough to go around, the planet had a
set "carrying capacity." Since growth was impossible, redistribution of what was
available called forth socialism. Technological advances tossed the idea of
limits out the window. Perhaps not all wants can be satisfied for all people,
but clearly more can be done to advance civilization and improve the lives of
billions. Growth is still possible and its fruits highly desirable.

So
the socialists had to up the stakes. Further growth would kill us all, they
proclaimed. The resources might be available, but to exploit them would destroy
the planet. Already, we have come too far. Global warming (or now climate
change, since the latest warming phase may be waning) makes growth undesirable,
and if there is to be no more growth, what is allowed to be produced must be
rationed by socialist planners on an equitable basis. This is the practical
meaning of sustainable.

Green is essential to Red. Environmentalism will
be pushed regardless of the state of scientific knowledge because socialism
requires it. It is a sin not to believe that Nature commands limits on human
civilization, justifying enforcement by socialist vicars.

Browner's
appointment to the presidential staff does not require Senate confirmation. It
is a reward to the far Left who backed Obama in the primaries. Yet, the new
president must know that the public expects him to pull the country out of the
recession and return to a path of economic growth. If he fails to revive the
economy, he will not be re-elected.

Yet, the worst economic downturn
since the 1930s would only be a down payment on the reduction in living
standards the Greens would impose on America to reach their goal of rationed
scarcity and a global redistribution of wealth. Browner as Climate Czar can be
expected to threaten floods, storms and pestilence as holy vengeance against
America's love of progress and innovation. But this is one secular "church" that
really does need to be separated from the state, as its dogma is horribly false.

THE GOVERNMENT has quietly
adopted powers enabling it to introduce national pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes
of up to œ100 without a vote in parliament. The move, which was confirmed this
weekend by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), will
allow councils across the country to impose extra charges on householders who
leave out too much non-recyclable waste.

The fact that ministers have
adopted powers to impose the taxes on millions of households without a vote in
the Commons will shock MPs. They always believed they would be able to veto the
unpopular move following trials in five pilot areas. Last week the government
also sidelined parliament to move ahead with plans to introduce a controversial
third runway at Heathrow airport.

The Tories discovered the bin tax
measure in a little-noticed clause of the Climate Change Act. "New taxes are
being imposed by arrogant and out-of-touch rulers, showing contempt for the
democratic process. The imposition of extra-parliamentary taxation is a
constitutional outrage," said Eric Pickles, shadow communities and local
government secretary."

Internal Whitehall documents released last year
showed the government is planning for at least two-thirds of all homes to be hit
by the bin taxes. Under one option discussed by ministers, households would have
to pay for special bin bags. Rubbish not placed in these bags would remain
uncollected. Households would be charged for the size of their bins; families
requiring a bigger bin will pay the most. Those requiring a weekly rubbish
collection would also have to pay an extra charge.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Greenies caused the crash of US Airways Flight
1549 into the Hudson River

A flock of Canada Geese (called "large
birds" in the media) appears to have brought down the plane by being sucked into
its engines. The plague of Canada geese in much of the United States exists
because of evironmental protection laws. They would soon make lovely roasts on
lots of dining-room tables otherwise. But, obnoxious as the geese are, the power
of the Greenie lobby prevents any culling. And Congress has done its best to
back up the Greenies by funding "non-lethal" measures to remove the geese.
Clearly, those methods did not work

Geese overpopulation is a major health hazard to local residents
and the environment. Federal funds will go towards "Geesepeace" program for
New York that uses humane methods to stop Canadian geese from ruining parks
and fields

US Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced that Congress
has passed $200,000 in federal funds for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to
implement a Geesepeace program that works to alleviate the Canada geese
overpopulation problem that threatens the health of local residents and the
environment. Geesepeace is a national non-profit organization that uses
non-lethal methods to reduce the number of geese and redirect them to areas
where they pose less of a threat to people. The funds come as part of the
agricultural appropriations component of the Omnibus bill passed today by the
Senate and have been earmarked to be used specifically for New York. The bill,
previously passed by the House, now awaits the President's
signature.

"Canada geese are overrunning our parks and open spaces and
their droppings are polluting our water and our land," Schumer said. "When you
talk to anyone who uses local parks, playgrounds, open spaces, athletic fields
and golf courses, you hear the same complaint, time and time again. That's why
we need a solution to this problem and that's what we have with the Geesepeace
program. It will control the goose population and keep our parks and open
spaces clean, green and beautiful."

This issue came up in 2004
when Geesepeace was trying to save a flock of geese from Riker's Island (in the
flight path of Laguardia) rather than have the geese killed:

In this time of trouble in faraway places, the man-versus-fowl
struggle brewing on Rikers Island may seem trivial. But its implications are
dire for a certain flock. On one side are geese, slender-necked and given to
relieving themselves liberally, who like where they are living, a stone's
throw away from La Guardia Airport. On the other is a worried band of federal
officials who believe the geese are too close to planes carrying millions of
passengers in and out of one of the nation's busiest airports.

History
teaches that these things hardly ever end well - for the birds at least.
Indeed, by the end of the day today, barring a last minute reprieve, 495
Canada geese will be on their way to an upstate slaughterhouse, Port Authority
and federal wildlife officials said yesterday.

There's nothing
in the New York Times archives between the 2004 slaughter and the crash
yesterday, but I think an investigation into what was or wasn't done over the
years to control the geese is in order. If environmental concerns overrode
passenger safety then that's something that needs to be debated in light of
yesterday's miracle.

The US
Secretary of State-designate, Hillary Clinton, has said countries including
India must be made part of any agreement on climate change and announced that
the Obama Administration would appoint a Climate Change Envoy for the purpose.
"As we move toward Copenhagen and attempt to craft a climate change agreement,
all the major nations must be part of it. You know, China, India, Russia, and
others, they have to be part of whatever agreement we put forth," Clinton said
during the course of her nomination hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee yesterday. "I think, as I say, this can be both included in but also
independently given attention to by emphasizing energy security which I intend
to do," she said.

In response to a question from Senator John Kerry,
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton said: "We will have
a climate change envoy negotiator, because we want to elevate it and we want to
have one person who will lead our international efforts." At the same time, she
said that America's credibility leading internationally will depend, in large
measure, on what the US is able to accomplish here at home.

Big Coal is on a roll in the nation's capital, winning early
rounds this week in what promises to be a long fight over fossil fuels and
climate change. Despite a well-funded ad campaign by environmentalists attacking
the industry, and a huge coal-ash spill in Tennessee that has led to calls for
more regulation, the industry has received positive assurances this week from
President-elect Barack Obama's nominees that the new administration is committed
to keeping coal a big part of the nation's energy source.

On Wednesday,
Mr. Obama's choice to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa
Jackson, described coal to a Senate panel as "a vital resource" for the country.
A day earlier, Mr. Obama's nominee to run the Energy Department, physicist
Steven Chu, referred to coal as a "great natural resource." Two years ago, he
called the expansion of coal-fired power plants his "worst nightmare." The
comments indicated the new administration is trying to steer toward the center
in the debate over the costs associated with curbing fossil fuels and the
greenhouse gases they produce.

Environmental groups are ratcheting up
attacks on the industry. Last month, a group led by former Vice President Al
Gore ran a national TV and print ad campaign lampooning the promise of so-called
clean-coal technology and suggesting it would be risky for the U.S. to hold off
on regulation of carbon-dioxide emissions until such technology becomes
commercially available. Coal-fired power plants account for half of the U.S.
electricity supply, and are one of the leading sources of U.S. emissions of
carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

Carl Pope, executive director of
the Sierra Club, said Wednesday he wasn't surprised by the nominees' comments
and noted that a 2007 Supreme Court ruling obligated the Obama administration to
eventually determine whether greenhouse-gas emissions endanger health or
welfare, the legal trigger for regulating them under the federal Clean Air
Act.

Addressing the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works,
Ms. Jackson didn't say Wednesday how quickly her agency would reach that
decision, but promised to "immediately revisit" the December 2007 order by
current EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to deny California and other states
permission to implement their own controls on automobile greenhouse-gas
emissions.

Separately, an influential group of corporations and
environmental groups is scheduled Thursday to ask that any federal limit on
greenhouse-gas emissions not hit coal-burning power producers too hard. The U.S.
Climate Action Partnership plans to ask Congress for mandates that would seek to
cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions 42% below 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% below
2005 levels by 2050, according to a copy of the group's recommendations reviewed
by The Wall Street Journal.

It
looks a lot like someone hit the snooze button on North American action to
address climate change. The Harper government made an early and enthusiastic
pitch for a market-based carbon cap-and-trade scheme -- one day after Barack
Obama's presidential win in November. Protection for Alberta's oilsands exports
to the U.S. would be a key part of the plan, advanced by Foreign Minister
Lawrence Cannon and Environment Minister Jim Prentice. We have been speaking
about a cap-and-trade system on a North American basis, so (there are) some
exciting opportunities," Prentice declared. But there has been no official
reaction since then from the Obama administration.

And the Conference
Board of Canada warned in a recent briefing paper that the economic crisis is
crowding out the environmental one. While the threat of climate change has not
disappeared, "potential action has been pushed to the back burner," the
Ottawa-based policy group said.

It's hard to argue with that analysis.
Obama has been clear about his first order of business. "The economy is badly
damaged, it is very sick," he told TV cameras as he carried out discussions on
Capitol Hill aimed at getting an economic stimulus package signed into law as a
first priority after his Jan. 20 inauguration. The package, which has
preoccupied Obama since November, calls for spending $775 billion over two
years. It includes $300 billion in tax cuts for individuals and small
businesses.

The financial mess in the U.S. is also likely to impede
international climate-change talks scheduled for November in Copenhagen. At that
meeting, the international community will be charged with developing a
post-Kyoto accord, to take effect in January 2013. "It will take a sea change,"
the conference board said, "to persuade governments to impose serious carbon
restrictions or to invest heavily in new technology in the midst of the looming
downturn and the clamour for bailouts."

Obama made pledges during his
campaign for the presidency to champion tough action on climate change. He has
followed through by creating a new post of special assistant on energy and
climate change, and naming several climate-change advocates to his cabinet. But
the Democratic president-elect derived a lot of his support from labour, and job
protection is bound to be his overriding concern during a time of financial
uncertainty. Fears about imposing additional costs on U.S. industries that would
harm their competitiveness doubtlessly will influence what Obama is able to
achieve on the environmental front. The U.S. government may opt to delay
legislative action on climate change until 2010, the paper said.

When
U.S. politicians do proceed, the Congress -- believed to favour a cap-and-trade
program over a carbon tax -- will probably insist on parallel environmental
commitments from developing countries such as India and China, to ensure U.S.
business is not put at a disadvantage. This would be a welcome development for
the Harper government, which at past climate-change conferences has argued that
India and China must join the greenhouse-gas reduction effort.

If a
North American scheme is to be established, it will be up to Ottawa to take the
initiative. The best strategy, the conference board asserted, is for the
Canadian government to convince Washington that: - Canada is essential to its
energy security needs. Indeed, Canada currently is the largest supplier of oil
and gas to the U.S. Carbon emissions from oilsands oil -- when calculated in
terms of transportation from the well head to the gas pump -- are as low as
Venezuelan and Middle East oil. Canada is committed to investing in clean
technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The conference board
suggested a Montreal-based agency that was created as part of NAFTA -- the North
American Commission for Environmental Co-operation -- be deployed as a
co-ordinating body for a Canada-U.S. climate-change plan. The agency could build
on two initiatives already launched by an assortment of states and provinces,
the Western Climate Initiative and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. To
date, 17 states and five provinces --British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec
and New Brunswick -- have signed on.

This is a
restrained comment but the fact that it comes from the Leftist "Salon" is
interesting

While 99 out of 100 economists, it seems, are calling for
a big fiscal stimulus, "big fiscal stimulus" makes me nervous. Basic Keynesian
macroeconomic theory states that deficit spending can be used to help an economy
recover from a downturn. We've been applying deficit spending for the past eight
years or so and we are staring at an ugly recession. Deficit spending did not
prevent the recession, so it may be that further deficit spending is not the
answer.

The Wall Street Journal's economic forecast survey concludes that
a big fiscal stimulus will lead to positive economic growth by the third quarter
of 2009. But without the fiscal stimulus positive economic growth will be
restored by the beginning of 2010. Speeding up the recovery is important in the
short run, but there are also long-run risks associated with excessive
government spending. At some large debt to gross domestic product ratio, lenders
may no longer buy our government bonds and interest rates could
spike.

Having said all this, the answer to the "what sort of fiscal
stimulus is needed question" seems clear. If government is going to spend a
bunch of money, the money should be well spent. Government should pursue
spending that leads to the largest difference between benefits and costs (i.e.,
largest net benefit), where benefits and costs are broadly defined.

If
the government projects are ranked in terms of net benefits, whether the ranking
is done with explicit monetary values does not really matter at this point, and
those projects with the highest net benefits are pursued, then the efficiency of
the U.S. economy will be enhanced and we will be in a better long-term economic
situation. Creating make-work jobs, digging holes and filling them back in, does
little to enhance the long-run prospects of the U.S. economy.

Which
brings us to green jobs. The first thing to understand from a microeconomic
perspective is that new jobs represent costs to society. Green jobs, therefore,
are a metric for the costs of improving the environment. The benefits are the
improved health, recreational opportunities, visibility and other metrics that
arise from environmental policy. Green jobs are simply the wrong metric for the
positive impacts of environmental policy.

Another concern with green jobs
is that many of these jobs created by environmental policy will simply replace
jobs in other sectors of the economy, leading to little net change in the
overall number of jobs. Some sectors of the economy might overcome this inherent
trade-off, for example, idle workers hired to weatherize 1 million homes, but
these aren't the sort of job sectors that lead to big macroeconomic
improvements.

Further, the cost differential between clean renewable
energy and dirty nonrenewable energy is large enough that government mandates
are necessary to jump-start the demand for renewable energy. Government mandates
are the sort of policies that are most expensive and inefficient. The
opportunity cost of these green jobs might be high.

There is one place
where environmental policy can lead to a net increase in jobs, but this is a
long-run proposition and not the sort of right-now-jobs that we would demand
from a fiscal stimulus. A cleaner environment improves the health of workers and
ecosystems, which increases labor productivity. Increasing labor productivity
leads to an increase in the productive capacity of the economy. A healthier
economy will, therefore, support more jobs, albeit in the long
run.

Mixing the notion of fiscal stimulus with the pursuit of
environmental quality is misguided. Both outcomes are likely to fall short of
goals. It makes much more sense to pursue fiscal policy without a green jobs
constraint and pursue environmental policy without a macroeconomic
constraint.

Because their specialized
knowledge confers authority, climate scientists should make every effort to be
accurate and complete when communicating to the public about the politically
divisive issue of climate change. Unfortunately, there are several points where
Alexander Bedritsky's thought-provoking article "Meteorology and the War on
Climate Change" (Summer 2008) fails to do this. Bedritsky states that "human
activities are altering the climate at an increasingly alarming rate." However,
according to data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), the rate of planetary warming that was established in the
mid-1970s has been remarkably constant, varying only slightly from 0.17øC per
decade.

The 21 computer models used by the IPCC share a common ensemble
characteristic: for the midrange emissions scenario they, too, predict a
constant rate of warming, not an "increasing" rate. The models simply produce
different rates. As a meteorologist, Bedritsky knows that the way to adjudicate
between differing forecast models is to literally "look out the window" to see
which is performing the best. In the case of climate models, looking at the
warming trend that has been established accomplishes the same, and yields a 21st
century warming of 1.7øC, which is within, but near the low end, of the entire
range of projections made by the IPCC.

Even this may be an
overestimation. It is very clear, from both the IPCC data and from satellite
measurements, that there has been no net warming since 1998 (which was a record
year because of a very strong El Ni¤o warming in the tropical Pacific). Further,
as noted by Keenlyside et al. in Nature earlier this year, Atlantic and Pacific
temperature patterns indicate that little warming can be expected for several
more years. Many of the IPCC's climate models are indeed capable of reproducing
El Ni¤o-like temperature excursions, but none-not one-of the models illustrated
in the IPCC's 2007 report projects a period of 15 years with no net
warming.

Bedritsky's statement about a "marked decline" of global ice
cover is also contextually incomplete. Sea-ice in the Northern Hemisphere,
mainly in the Arctic Ocean, has declined significantly since systematic
measurements began in 1979, but 1979 was at the end of the coldest period in the
Arctic since the mid-1920s. While the recent decline is clearly related to
warming temperatures, paleoclimatic evidence from northern Eurasia indicates
that late summer sea-ice in the Arctic was likely to have been very spotty or
non-existent for millennia after the end of the last ice age. Obviously the
polar bear and the Inuit survived. Ice extent measured by satellite in the
Southern Hemisphere has increased and was at record high levels, adjusted for
season, earlier this year.

I think Bedritsky's article would have been
more complete, if less alarming, if he had noted these observations about
climate history, climate models, and ice. Their omission reminds me of President
Eisenhower's fears that a technological elite could acquire inordinate power. In
his farewell address,famous for its introduction of the notion of a
"military-industrial" complex, Eisenhower went on to say something equally
prescient and disturbing, "Holding scientific research and discovery in respect,
as we should, we must always be alert to the equal and opposite danger that
public policy could itself become a captive of a scientific-technological
elite." This is precisely the danger that accrues when authoritative scientists
do not communicate complete information to the public.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Barack Obama's pick for "regulatory
czar," Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming
president's most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume --
best-selling author, "pre-eminent legal scholar of our time," and an endorsement
from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as
we're telling the media today, there's one troubling portion of the new Office
of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator's C.V. that has seems
to have flown under everyone's radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights
activist.

Don't believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion
to the cause of establishing legal "rights" for livestock, wildlife, and pets.
"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment,
scientific experiments, and agriculture," Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper
while at the University of Chicago Law school.

"Extensive regulation of
the use of animals." That's PETA-speak for using government to get everything
PETA and the Humane Society of the United States can't get through gentle
pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the kind of thing American
ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters, and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of
ordinary consumers) would like to hear from their next "regulatory
czar."

A version of the same paper also appeared as the introduction to
Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, a 2004 book that Sunstein
co-edited with then-girlfriend Martha Nussbaum. In that book, Sunstein set out
an ambitious plan to give animals the legal "right" to file lawsuits. We're not
joking:

"[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as
their representatives, to prevent violations of current law . Any animals that
are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would
owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those
obligations, on their clients' behalf."

It doesn't end there.
Sunstein delivered a keynote speech at Harvard University's 2007 "Facing
Animals" conference. (Click here to watch the video; his speech starts around
39:00.) Keep in mind that as OIRA Administrator, Sunstein will have the
political authority to implement a massive federal government overhaul. Consider
this tidbit:

"We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose
other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It's time now."

Sunstein also argued in favor of "eliminating current practices
such as greyhound racing, cosmetic testing, and meat eating, most
controversially."

He concluded his Harvard speech by expressing his "more
ambitious animating concern" that the current treatment of livestock and other
animals should be considered "a form of unconscionable barbarity not the same
as, but in many ways morally akin to, slavery and mass extermination of human
beings." Sound familiar?

As the individual about to assume "the most
important position that Americans know nothing about," Sunstein owes the public
an honest appraisal of his animal rights goals before taking office. Will the
next four years be a dream-come-true for anti-meat, anti-hunting, and
anti-everything-else radicals? Time will tell. For now, meat lovers might want
to stock their freezers.

BY MIKE SMITH (Mike Smith is a certified
consulting meteorologist and CEO of WeatherData Services of Wichita
Kansas)

For more than 20 years, we have been hearing doomsday
predictions about global warming's effects on Kansas and across the world.
Locally, during the hot Kansas summer of 2006, forecasts were issued and media
articles written tying that hot, dry weather to global warming, and forecasting
more extreme heat in the future. According to one scientist with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming in 2006 was already
"kicking the heat up a notch."

But the weather has refused to cooperate
with those forecasts. More drought? The reality: 2007 and 2008 were the two
wettest years in the history of Wichita. No area of Kansas is experiencing
drought at the present time, in spite of all that hand-wringing just two years
ago. Extreme heat? The reality: The past two years, combined, had 21 fewer days
than average with 90-degree or higher temperatures. Since 1990, there has been a
downward trend in 100-degree or warmer temperatures in Wichita.

It isn't
just Kansas. In spite of the highest concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
history of civilization, world temperatures have failed to warm the past 10
years. Ocean heat content is falling. World ice concentrations (Arctic and
Antarctic combined) are higher than normal.

The 2001 forecasts by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (cited by Al Gore) have failed to
capture the recent cooling, as the above graph indicates, suggesting that the
carbon dioxide-atmosphere connection is more complex than some initially
believed. A small but growing number of scientists are becoming concerned about
global cooling due to the current unusually low solar activity and other
geophysical factors.

The fact is that the solar-land-ocean-atmosphere
system is incredibly complex, and meteorologists have no consistent skill at
forecasting its behavior a year into the future, let alone decades hence. I
don't know what 2009's or 2029's weather might bring, nor does anyone else. The
sciences of meteorology and climatology still have a lot of learning to do. My
personal conclusion: The science is definitely not settled.

Despite all scare-mongering to the contrary, carbon dioxide in the
Earth's atmosphere is not the cause of global warming. To be an agent of
greenhouse heating, carbon dioxide (or any) atmospheric gas would have to be
capable of absorbing in significant quantities both the sun's radiation spectrum
(the ultimate source of natural heating on Earth) and of absorbing heat
radiating back from the Earth (the greenhouse effect).

There is a
process to measure a gas's absorption ability called atomic absorption
spectrometry. Suspicious of the entire global warming hysteria, atmospheric
physicist James A. Peden put carbon dioxide through just such an analysis. Based
on where and how much of the sun's total radiation output, which consists of
light and other wavelengths not visible to human eyes, Peden estimates that
carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere takes in no more than 8 percent of the
sun's total radiation. It's the same percentage for heat radiated back from
Earth.

"Man-made CO2 doesn't appear physically capable of absorbing much
more than two-thousandths of the radiated heat passing upward through the
atmosphere," Peden writes. "And, if all the available heat in the atmosphere is
indeed being captured by the current CO2 levels before leaving the atmosphere,
then adding more CO2 to the atmosphere won't matter a bit." Holy cow! Hard
scientific analysis finds carbon dioxide not guilty as charged because this gas
simply does not have the molecular mojo to play the role of atmospheric heater.
The real culprit is water vapor, which Peden estimates is responsible for 95
percent of all greenhouse heating in the atmosphere. In politics, citing carbon
dioxide, whether from natural or human-made sources, for causing global warming
is the equivalent of blaming the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on former Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein.

Peden is hardly the only skeptical scientist. In
December 2007, 100 scientists signed an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon. That letter had some harsh words about the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, saying that its conclusions about carbon dioxide's role in
climate change are "quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies
that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not
established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through
cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions."

Last March, 500 scientists
attending the 2008 International Climate Conference in New York City signed the
Manhattan Declaration, saying, in part, "that there is no convincing evidence
that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or
will in the future cause catastrophic climate change." The Manhattan Declaration
also notes that "current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a
dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be
dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems." Amen to that.

Can we finally get real about climate change? There is a lot of
political pressure to spend enormous sums of money on a CO2 cap-and-trade system
that won't solve any problems but will add significant burdens to a world
economy already on the ropes. And no. Peden is not in the pay of polluters or
the oil industry. He is editor of the Middlebury Community Network of
Middlebury, Vermont, and has worked as an atmospheric physicist at the Space
Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and at Extranuclear Laboratories
in Blawnox, Penn., studying ion molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere.

Peden's spectrometer analysis cuts through all the unexamined
assumptions and downright lies about the role of carbon dioxide in the Earth's
atmosphere. The only question here is why we are not hearing a whole lot more in
the media about legitimate scientific objections to the greenhouse gases theory
of global warming. Perhaps, having been bamboozled by the Bush Administration
over Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, these same ace reporters
and editors simply cannot bear to acknowledge being hoodwinked about carbon
dioxide, too.

A Dutch Warmist blog has tried to discredit one of
the skeptical scientists on Marc Morano's long list . The
Skeptic replies:

Hi, I'm Hajo Smit and true I'm not all that
important. Our precious world and society is however and the AGW-alarmists are
not doing the planet a great service. In 1991 I graduated with distinction at
Wageningen Univesity in the field of Environmental Sciences. I majored in
meteorology and climate science. I spent 3 months studying in Mainz Max Planck
Insitute of Atmospheric Chemistry under nobel laureate Paul Crutzen's guidance
and spent 11 months studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana Chamaign at
the Atmospheric Sciences departmant doing climate modelling under Michael
Schlesinger. After graduating I left climate science only to start studying the
literature intensly again around 2006. I'm listed as an expert on icecap.us. I'm
also listed on Inhofe's list and correctly so. If I'm not qualified to speak on
these matters who is? Currently I'm working as a journalist/meteorologist on my
own website www.sneeuwverwachting.nl which caters exclusively to the
wintersports crowd in the Netherlands. Thanks for looking into my files.... the
publications you mention are polemic blog postings and not scientific
literature. Since when a former scientist is not allowed to turn to journalism
and free writing styles to give his opinions with the best interest of nature
and mankind in mind? That sounds a lot like
censorship.

Eskimos say no decline in polar bear
numbers

But the elitist knowalls just ignore such "primitives", of
course

Canada is home to about two-thirds of the world's polar bears
but scientists warn populations are starting to dwindle because of thawing sea
ice, over-hunting, industrial activity in the Arctic and an increase of toxins
in the food chain. Some have said two-thirds of the world's polar bears could
disappear within 50 years if nothing is done to slow the loss of sea
ice.

But many Inuit say they haven't seen a decline in the population and
worry that overly harsh restrictions that threaten the northern way of life will
be imposed to appease people who don't depend on the bears for their livelihood.
"We feel our polar bears are doing fine," said Nunavut Environment Minister
Daniel Shewchuk. "We're basing that on living there and living with polar bears
all of our lives ... People are encountering more polar bears out on the
land."

When the bear population increases, it becomes a safety issue for
residents who can no longer even go camping, Shewchuk said. The Inuit would like
to do a proper survey of the bears once they get funding, he added.

Peter
Ewins, director of species conservation at the World Wildlife Federation, said
more than half of Canada's polar bear subpopulations are dwindling. "Sea ice is
what polar bears live on and it's vanishing at accelerating rates," [That has
now gone into reverse] said Ewins, who will be a presenter at the summit.
"There is a major problem. Many things need to be done to fix it."

The
government needs to protect polar bear habitat by curbing industrial activity in
the North and by taking bold measures to address global warming, he said. People
must also stop hunting in Baffin Bay until the bear population has a chance to
recover, he added. "It comes down to a simple reality - there is a problem here.
You can't deny scientific consensus. [You can if it's wrong]

Flint broke a 95-year-old record early
Wednesday morning when the temperature plummeted to a frigid 19 below zero. The
previous record? Minus 10, set in 1914, according to the National Weather
Service. Here's the even worse news: We won't seeing relief in the next few
days.

Early morning lows Thursday are expected to be 9 below zero, with
a 20 below zero wind chill. Highs on Thursday will reach 4 degrees. Friday's
lows are expected to be 5 below, with wind chills reaching 25 below. Highs are
expected to reach around 6 degrees. Wind chills will reach 25 below again on
Saturday. We don't get any relief until Sunday, when highs are supposed to be a
relatively balmy 22 degrees.

The National Weather Service issued a wind
chill advisory through 7 p.m. Thursday. But the only reason the advisory isn't
in effect until Saturday morning, said Matt Mosteiko, meteorologist of the
National Weather Service, is because wind chill advisories can only be issued
for 24 hours at a time. For now, it's just a wind chill watch until Saturday
morning. And very cold.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Hansen comes clean at last?

Maybe
the attack on his numbers by Lubos Motl and others was the last straw. I am
advised by email that NASA's Hansen has at last released his "data adjustment"
computer code to Steve McIntyre -- after a lot of pressure from Steve to do just
that. I assume it is FORTRAN code -- a la Michael Mann. It would be a lot
simpler if Hansen had just released his algorithms but the FORTRAN code should
eventually reveal what they were/are. As I know from experience, backtracking
through someone else's FORTRAN code is very difficult at any time, however, and
I hear that Hansen's code is far from elegant, so it will be some time before we
know much.

I think there is a strong possibility that Hansen has simply
adjusted his code from time to time in an ad hoc way rather than setting up a
systematic theory first -- and there is much potential for cumulative errors in
doing that. I don't envy Steve his disentangling task. Hansen may be relying on
it being impossible.

The one who has not released his methods is Phil
Jones of CRU.

Goodies for Australian scientists
with flexible ethics

Research grants are a very powerful argument
in favour of doing and saying whatever is expected. The grants below are for
"coping" research but they assume that there is something to be coped with. And
the temperature record since 1998 makes that a dubious peg to hang your research
on

One of the world's largest research grant pools for climate change
adaptation, about $30million, is expected to be allocated over the next two
years, the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility announced
yesterday. The $50 million NCCARF, set up in contentious circumstances by former
environment minister Malcolm Turnbull during the 2007 election campaign, is
preparing to take research application grants across eight priority areas.

Based at Griffith University, NCCARF recently published the first three
of eight draft research priority plans: for health, disaster and emergency
management; marine biodiversity; and resources. Research adaptation plans for
terrestrial biodiversity, primary industries, water resources, human settlements
and social, economic and institutional dimensions will follow this year. Last
year Griffith and James Cook University signed a research deal aimed at
positioning themselves ahead of the proposed new national research priorities of
tropical science and climate change adaptation.

In what appears to
signal the emergence of the first university research hub, Griffith and NCCARF
will host a series of seven university-based research networks on climate change
adaptation. This will include three of the Group of Eight research-intensive
universities. Under the JCU- Griffith deal, the universities will do joint
research and supervise each other's postgraduates to position themselves as
research leaders in tropical science and climate adaptation for the
Asia-Pacific.

JCU deputy vice-chancellor, research, and leading UN
climate change author Chris Cocklin told the HES the alliance had been formed in
response to the Rudd Government's proposed new national research priorities.
"Both universities want to consolidate our research on tropical knowledge, and
it's also no secret that it's a direct response to (Innovation) Minister Kim
Carr's policy to build capacity (hubs) in areas of national priority," he said.
"Tropical solutions", especially their subset issues of technology transfer to
Australia's neighbours, is one of nine priorities in the Cutler innovation
review released last September.

NCCARF director and former
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change impact and adaptation author Jean
Palutikof told the HES that the field of adaptation research was not well
advanced and the emphasis would be on developing resilience. "We are hopeful
about making a (research application) call over the next few months for the
first three plans, and the other five as soon as possible thereafter," she said
yesterday. Professor Palutikof said a fellow IPCC author, British-based Neil
Adger, had described the $30million as "one of the biggest pots of money ever
put up for adaptation research; it's a significant investment internationally".

She said the extent to which Australia, already challenged by climate
extremes such as drought and tropical storms, could adapt to climate change was
restricted by the lack of precise predictions of changes at the local level,
especially for rainfall. "Even under such uncertainties, we can plan for the
future. Adaptation will be easier for resilient systems, and research is needed
into what makes systems and institutions resilient and what actions we can take
to enhance resilience," she said. Heat extremes, extreme weather, vector-borne
disease, mental health and healthcare systems and infrastructure are among the
research priorities identified in the health plan.

Last October, Climate
Change Minister Penny Wong announced a $10 million grant under which Griffith
and its NCCARF would host a series of mainly university-based research networks.
NCCARF expects to allocate about $20 million this year and the remaining $30
million in 2010, Professor Palutikof said.

Until
last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global
warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission
for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says
rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. By
Thursday, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist
International's Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group's
congress in Greece was still available.

Socialist International, an
umbrella group for many of the world's social democratic political parties such
as Britain's Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of
U.S. policies. The group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the
organization's action arm on climate change, says the developed world must
reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas
emissions.

Mr. Obama, who has said action on climate change would be a
priority in his administration, tapped Mrs. Browner last month to fill a new
position as White House coordinator of climate and energy policies. The
appointment does not need Senate confirmation.

Mr. Obama's transition
team said Mrs. Browner's membership in the organization is not a problem and
that it brings experience in U.S. policymaking to her new role. "The Commission
for a Sustainable World Society includes world leaders from a variety of
political parties, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded
Tony Blair, in serving as vice president of the convening organization," Obama
transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said. "Carol Browner was chosen to help the
president-elect coordinate energy and climate policy because she understands
that our efforts to create jobs, achieve energy security and combat climate
change demand integration among different agencies; cooperation between federal,
state and local governments; and partnership with the private sector," Mr.
Shapiro said in an e-mail.

Mrs. Browner ran the Environmental Protection
Agency under President Clinton. Until she was tapped for the Obama
administration, she was on the board of directors for the National Audubon
Society, the League of Conservation Voters, the Center for American Progress and
former Vice President Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection. Her name has
been removed from the Gore organization's Web site list of directors, and the
Audubon Society issued a press release about her departure from that
organization.

EU chemophobia knows no bounds. It has already destroyed
minor industries and severely hampered major ones by the reckless banning of
elements and compounds with little consideration of the possible effects. Now
from West Country MEP Neil Parish we have this announcement:

Strasbourg, 13th January 2009 - The European Parliament has voted
to ban a large number of the plant protection products available to British
producers, despite a concerted effort by Conservative MEPs to restore some
balance and proportionality to the plans.

West Country MEP, Neil
Parish, the Chairman of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee has
warned the parliament's overzealous approach will take a vast number of
products off the market. The ban will reduce yields of a number of foods
including carrots, cereals, potatoes, onions and parsnips, whilst pushing up
prices for consumers.

Conservative efforts to reject a deal agreed by
the parliament and the council of ministers did not achieve the 393 votes
required. Yesterday, a Conservative amendment calling for a full impact
assessment on the plans was rejected by the parliament's services. Now, the
plans could only be stopped by a last-ditch effort by the British government,
although over the last several months they have failed to back up their
opposition with action.

"This law will drive up the cost of the weekly
food shop at the worst time for British families. "We do need strong
restrictions on pesticide use but it should be based on sound science, rather
than on the whim of politicians. There has been no balance whatsoever in the
parliament's position. MEPs have failed to see pesticides as necessary tools
in maintaining our crops.

"Many of the products on the market today
are safe when used correctly, and have been around for years. Without crop
protection products, our food supplies will be volatile at a time when food
security is rising up the political agenda.

"The Labour government has
expressed concern about this directive, but it has failed to put the case
nearly as strongly as it should have. "It is ludicrous that such a plan would
be brought into law without an impact assessment to gauge its consequences.
The only hope we have is for a last-ditch effort by the government to demand
we finally get an overall picture of how food production will be affected
across the EU."

Parish makes a good case but rather understates
it. Yes there will be a process of attrition, which will greatly reduce the
competitiveness of European farming and cause food shortages.

The real
worry, however, is the new risk of a serious explosion of one particular pest,
as yet unidentifiable, that will sweep through the continent destroying all
before it. The greens who dominate the EU have this dream of returning mankind
to an imagined past paradise, but the world has changed. People are crowded into
cities and depend on intensive, mechanised farming to feed them. A new strain
of, say, influenza can move round the world in a matter of days; while some
human diseases, once regarded as belonging to the past, such as TB, are making a
comeback in resistant forms. So it is with plant pests and diseases.

The
great Irish famine of the 1840s, a tragic event that did much to change world
history, was precipitated by common potato blight (and worsened by bureaucratic
inefficiency). Your bending author's tomato crop was wiped out last year by the
same disease. Amateur growers have already been seriously hampered by EU
restrictions on chemicals, some of which have been used safely for years, and
have been obliged to abandon some types of crop. The Colorado potato beetle
caused panic in wartime and post-war Britain, even once being considered as a
potential weapon.

Such practicalities do not cause concern in the
rarefied atmosphere of Brussels. There is little consultation other than with
blinkered green pressure groups. Science and its methods are regarded a pass‚.
Such a process of wilful neglect, as we have seen in the financial world, must
inevitably lead to a catastrophe. Those of us who warned about the foreseeable
result of the activities of the debt pushers were ignored. We are now warning
about another avoidable catastrophe and will no doubt be ignored
again.

It is a strange world in which an imaginary threat such as the
carbon scare can cause the wasteful expenditure of billions, yet in the face of
real threats we simply throw down our weapons of defence, but that is Greenery
for you.

Chicago
has most consecutive days of snowfall since records began in 1884

A
new record was set Wednesday when Chicago had its ninth consecutive day of
measurable snowfall, according to the National Weather Service. The previous
record was eight consecutive days set from Dec. 13 to 20, 1973. Snowfall records
in Chicago date back to 1884.

A wind chill warning has been issued as
temperatures as tsmperartures will not reach single digits until Friday. The
forecast for Thursday is: Sunny and cold, with a high near -3. Wind chill values
as low as -33. West northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph.

The BBC has a
more extended comment than that below, noting even that the climate change
concerned was sun-driven

Astounding as it
may sound, scientists are not ruling out the possibility that climate change may
have affected the sound of wooden musical instruments in the face of the
changing 'characteristic' of the wood due to global warming. Several attempts
have been made to make a violin that generates the same kind of sound as it did
in the 17th century, but to no avail," Dr T Ramaswami, Secretary in the
Department of Science and Technology.

"Several questions have been asked
as to why today's violin cannot match the phenomenal outcome of the original
violin. Though it is still a theory, many (experts) have opined that during the
17th century, the earth was passing through a little ice age. The world was
cool. The maple tree from which the violin is made was also softer than it is
today," he said.

Ramaswami, also a noted leather technologist, said
though it was yet to be confirmed, it could be because of the softness of the
maple tree in the 17th century that the musical outcome of the violin was so
'phenomenonal'. He said it was possible that the molecular structure of the
trees might have transformed over the years due to global warming, thus changing
the final outcome of the wooden instruments.

Physical properties of wood vary
substantially, depending, among other things, on the growth rate of the tree,
which determines the width of the annual ring and the density of the wood.
Stressed trees (i.e., growing under severe conditions) have closely spaced
annual rings and the physical properties of the wood are not the same as trees
that grow rapidly and develop wide rings.

For example, old-growth trees
that are 500-1000 years old have narrow rings and very straight grain that makes
them ideal for various uses as lumber. If you cut down the old-growth trees, the
next generation of trees grows very rapidly and typically has wide rings with
very irregular grain, making the wood less desirable.

Thus, wood used
for making violins could have rather different qualities depending on the
growing conditions of the trees. During the Little Ice Age, trees were stressed
and growth rings tend to be narrower and probably different in density than
trees that grew later under more optimal conditions. So the wood used to make
violins during the Little Ice Age could well have different physical properties
than younger wood.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Cheating in NASA climate data
probable

Hansen admits to many "adjustments" to his temperature
data but claims that they are statistically based. His final "data" certainly
diverges strongly from the raw data. Lubos Motl below thinks he has found "made
up" data rather than statistically adjusted data. Hansen will not reveal the
details of his adjustment procedures so that does feed suspicions. Motl did not
find similar divergences from randomness in climate datasets from other
sources

David Stockwell has analyzed the frequency of the final
digits in the temperature data by NASA's GISS led by James Hansen, and he claims
that the unequal distribution of the individual digits strongly suggests that
the data have been modified by a human hand.

With Mathematica 7, such
hypotheses take a few minutes to be tested. And remarkably enough, I must
confirm Stockwell's bold assertion although - obviously - this kind of
statistical evidence is never quite perfect and the surprising results may
always be due to "bad luck" or other explanations mentioned at the end of this
article.

Update: Steve McIntyre disagrees with David and myself and
thinks that there's nothing remarkable in the statistics. I confirm that if the
absolute values are included, if their central value is carefully normalized,
and the anomalies are distributed over just a couple of multiples of 0.1 øC,
there's roughly a 3% variation in the frequency of different digits which is
enough to explain the non-uniformities below. However, one simply obtains a
monotonically decreasing concentration of different digits and I feel that they
have a different fingerprint than the NASA data below. But this might be too
fine an analysis for such a relatively small statistical ensemble.

This
page shows the global temperature anomalies as collected by GISS. It indicates
that the year 2008 (J-D) was the coldest year in the 21st century so far, even
according to James Hansen et al., a fact you won't hear from them. But we will
look at some numerology instead.

Looking at those 1,548
figures

Among the 129*12 = 1,548 monthly readings, you would expect each
final digit (0..9) to appear 154.8 times or so. That's the average statistics
and you don't expect that each digit will appear exactly 154.8 times. Instead,
the actual frequencies will be slightly different than 154.8. How big is the
usual fluctuation from the central value?

Well, the rule is that the
abundance of each digit, centered at N=154.8, obeys the normal distribution
whose standard deviation is roughly sqrt(154.8). Well, it's actually
sqrt(139.32), as argued below, but let's avoid unimportant complications here.
It means that if you compute the average value of e.g. "(N_i-154.8)^2" over "i"
going between 0 and 9, you should again obtain 154.8.

It's not zero,
proving that some deviations from the "quotas" are inevitable. On the other
hand, it is pretty small for a square of the difference of rather large numbers.
And the value seems to be precisely determined. If you generate a random list of
1548 digits between 0 and 9, the average value of "(N_i-154.8)^2" over 10 digits
will be remarkably close to 150 or so.

I've played this random game many
times, to be sure that I use the correct statistical formulae.

Researchers debate
each other in new study; most disagree greenhouse gases are the cause.

The Japanese Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) published a new
study on the causes of Global Warming. Entitled, "Global warming: What is the
scientific truth?", the report highlights the differing views of five prominent
Japanese scientists. All but one of the scientists disagreed that global warming
is the result of human activity.

Contributing to the report were
Syunichi Akasofu, professor emeritus at the University of Alaska, and former
director of the Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and the International Arctic
Research Center, Shigenori Maruyama, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences
at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kiminori Itoh, professor of Physical
Chemistry at Yokohama National University, Seita Emori, head of the National
Institute for Environmental Sciences, and Kanya Kusano, director of the Japan
Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

While all the
researchers agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
statement that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal", four of the five
disagreed with the claim that the primary cause of the increase was due to
anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The only
researcher to agree with the IPCC's assertion was Emori, who is himself a member
of the IPCC.

Akasofu countered with the statement, "CO2 emissions
have been increasing, but the rise in air temperature stopped around 2001.
Climate change is due in large part to naturally occurring oscillations".
Akasofu says the earth's warming trend began prior to the industrial age, and
believes much of the warming seen may simply be a natural recovery from the
so-called Little Ice Age, that ended in the 17th century.

Professor Itoh
attacked the temperature record itself, saying "Data taken by the U.S. is
inadequate. We only have satellite data of global temperatures from 1979
onwards". Itoh, who has previously called global warming "the worst scientific
scandal in history", is also an expert reviewer for the IPCC.

Dr. Kasano
believes that cosmic rays, which are modulated by cycles in the strength of the
sun's magnetic fields, may potentially have large-scale impacts on the earth's
climate. The report includes the data in which the researchers base their
arguments, and can be publicly viewed (in Japanese) on the Internet.

Nicholas Tucker, Sr. who is a resident of
Emmonak, a village of about 800 people in Western Alaska, wrote a letter to the
people of Alaska, pleading for help to heat and feed his village. Tucker said
that the village is experiencing an unprecedented fuel and food crisis due to a
salmon disaster last summer, extreme cold, and crippling fuel prices. Tucker has
been a full time resident of the village since 1971, after he returned from
fighting in the Vietnam War. He writes that this is the first time that he's had
to decided between buying food or fuel for his family. "Couple of weeks ago, our
8-year old son had to go to bed hungry," he writes. The letter also chronicles
other villagers who are fighting for survival.

In a phone interview from
Emmonak, Tucker said that he's asking help from the people of Alaska because he
can't get help from the government. "We're trying. But in the meantime, there
are people here who need food and heat." Paul LaBolle, spokesman for State Rep.
Richard Foster, who represents the area, said that immediate government
assistance would have to come by way of an emergency declaration, which comes
from the governor's office. He also said that Foster is aware of the problem and
is working with the native corporation of Emmonak and with the executive branch
to come up with a solution.

Former Emmonak city manager Martin Moore
said that he's been asking for help since October, when a fuel barge couldn't
reach the village due to an early freeze. But he's had no luck. "When we have a
disaster, coupled with high cost of energy, government has an obligation to do
what it can to help people who are hurting," he said. He talked about a villager
who had just stopped by his house who didn't have enough money to buy gas for
his snowmachine to find wood to heat his house. "He's cold," Moore said. "I hear
those stories all the time here."

Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Alaska
Sen. Lisa Murkowski's office, said that the senator is aware of the situation
and a staff member has been in touch with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the
United States Division of Agriculture, and the State of Alaska about the
situation. "We're going everything we can do on the federal level but we don't
have a lot of options," Dillon said. Murkowski's Anchorage office is in the
process of organizing volunteers and events to help the area. Here's Tucker's
letter:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

From several years ago, our heating
fuel and gasoline costs have doubled in Emmonak. Current retail prices are $7.83
per gallon for heating fuel and $7.25 per gallon for gasoline, including the
city sales tax. Our village has run out of heating fuel and the first airlift
shipment has arrived at the airport. As early as today, the retail for our
winter shipments is expected to be anywhere from $9 - $11 per gallon or
higher.

Last summer, we experienced a king salmon fisheries disaster. We
did not have any king salmon commercial openings. We had a chum salmon
commercial harvest which is nothing compared to the king fishery. Chum harvest
traditionally covered our king salmon fishing start-up costs, most of the
purchase of new equipment, repair and maintenance, supplies, and operating
expenses. Our commercial fishermen did not make any money. Our income from this
meager, small-scale commercial harvest is basic to and vital to our seasonal
subsistence fishing and hunting, berry picking, plant gathering, motor oil and
gas, supplies, equipment, and cash for repairs of our outboard motors and our
snowmachines used for winter wood gathering. This income pays for our many
household bills.

Last fall, we weren't delivered our usual fall fuel
orders due to early freeze up. Following this, we got
hit by a rare weather anomaly: It has been very, very cold
since last part of September. This cold snap still persists as of this
day. Households have tell me that there is more snow covering the
driftwood out in the tundra and the coastlines, making it difficult finding the
logs for firewood. A lot more gasoline and motor oil is being used in search of
the driftwood. This winter-long, extreme cold snap is
causing the furnaces and boilers to run constantly and to their maximum.

My family of ten, with a household of six adults and four minors, is one
of the causalities of our current high costs of heating fuel and gasoline that
are devastating families and households here in Emmonak of 847 residents. I am
63 and my wife is 54. For the first time, beginning December 2008, I am forced
to decide buying between heating fuel or groceries. I had been forced to dig
into our January income to stay warm during December. Again, for this month,
same thing happens. I am taking away my February income this month to survive.
Couple of weeks ago, our 8-year old son had to go to bed hungry. My wife and I
provide for our family with disability, Veterans' benefits, social security, and
unemployment incomes. We are several months behind on our city water and sewer
bills. We had originally used up all our $1,200 energy subsidy to prepay
electricity for the winter and other bills in hope of surviving for this winter
due to these high fuel costs. We didn't anticipate the early
freeze-up that prevented our native corporation getting its winter supplies of
fuel. We didn't anticipate an unexpected winter-long bitter cold. I don't recall
anything having occurred as cold as it has been and its length that we have to
endure

Climate
Debate Skeptics Once Again Sway Undecided Vote in Leading Debate
Forum

Intelligence Squared U.S., the Oxford style debate series
sponsored by The Rosenkranz Foundation, announced the results of its first
debate of the Spring 2009 season, "Major reductions in carbon emissions are not
worth the money." In a dramatic shift, 25% of the undecided vote sided with the
motion by the end of the debate. In the final tally at the conclusion of the
debate, a sold out audience at Symphony Space, New York City, voted 42% for the
motion and 48% against. Ten percent remained undecided. Prior to the debate, the
audience at Symphony Space, New York City, voted 16% for the motion and 49%
against. 35% were undecided.

The results echoed a similar outcome on the
proposition, "Global warming is not a crisis," an Intelligence Squared U.S.
debate held on March 14, 2007. The Global Warming debate produced an initial
vote tally of 29% for the motion and 57% against. At the conclusion of the
debate, the vote margins had reversed with 46% for the motion and 42% against.

The "Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money"
debate will air on BBC World News March 7 and 8, 2009. The debate can be heard
on NPR beginning January 21, 2009. Speaking for the motion were Peter Huber,
author of "The Bottomless Well," Bjorn Lomborg, author of "Cool It" and "The
Skeptical Environmentalist," and scientist and Emeritus Professor from the
University of London, Philip Stott.

L. Hunter Lovins, president of
Natural Capitalism Solutions, Oliver Tickell, author of "Kyoto2," and Adam
Werbach, global chief executive officer at Saatchi & Saatchi S, spoke
against the motion. John Donvan, correspondent for ABC News' "Nightline,"
moderated. A full transcript of this debate will be available at
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/Event.aspx?Event=32. Key comments from this
debate included:

"We no longer control demand for carbon... The five
billion poor people are already the main problem -- not us. Collectively, the
poor already emit twenty percent more greenhouse gas than we do. We burn a lot
more carbon individually, of course, but they have a lot more children. Their
fecundity has beaten out our gluttony and the gap is now widening very fast.
China, not the United States, is now the largest emitter of greenhouse gas on
the planet and it will soon be joined by others. It's only a matter of time. And
finally, the poor countries have made perfectly clear that they are not
interested at all in spending what a low carbon diet would cost. They have more
pressing problems."- Peter Huber

"You know what's going to get China to
cut its carbon emissions? It's not going to be you and me and it's not going to
be the government. It's going to be Wal-Mart, which recently said to its Chinese
suppliers, 'You will report your carbon footprint through a little group called
The Carbon Disclosure Project.' Watch China's emissions start to come down
simply because that's the way the best companies are doing business now."- L.
Hunter Lovins

"One quarter of all the world's deaths are due to easily
curable infectious diseases. The equivalent of the population of Florida, wiped
off the map, each year. As an example, 1 million people die from malaria each
year, and up to 2 billion people get the debilitating disease. Yet, my esteemed
opponents will focus on how global warming will cause a slight increase in
malaria 100 years from now, and suggest that we should fix that through
inefficient carbon cuts... So, this is our chance. Our chance not just to feel
good about helping the planet, but actually to do the right thing, the rational
thing, and the morally correct thing. I commend this motion to you; do what's
rational, not just what's fashionable."- Bjorn Lomborg

To view
transcripts and videos or learn more about Intelligence Squared U.S. please
visit: http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org.

A ban on pesticides agreed by
the European Parliament could make vegetable production impossible and result in
a dramatic drop of wheat yields, farmers have said. The National Farmers' Union
said growing carrots, parsnips and onions would be more difficult because the
herbicides that MEPs voted to phase out killed weeds that affect these crops.

A total of 22 substances will be banned over the next decade as part of
an EU plan to remove chemicals that are thought to pose risks to human health
and damage water quality. Fears have been raised of a 20 per cent reduction in
wheat and an increase in vegetable prices, but officials said that British
farmers would be able to apply for permission to keep using two types of
herbicide they need to keep carrot-growing viable. The exemptions will last for
five years.

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said: "These
regulations could hit production for no recognisable benefit to human health,
and we are being asked to agree to something when nobody knows what the impact
will be."

Xenophon
is a successful lawyer and a genuine centrist, with some Left, some conservative
and some Green positions

Key crossbench senator Nick Xenophon has
stepped up his attack on the Government's planned emissions trading scheme. "The
Rudd Government targets are pretty pathetic, the 5per cent," Senator Xenophon
told The Australian yesterday. "What Rudd's done is overly bureaucratic and
cumbersome." The South Australian independent senator is travelling in the US
and Canada on budget airlines and Greyhound buses to examine carbon reduction
schemes, on a trip paid for from his own pocket.

Senator Xenophon said
the Government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would lead to a
massive churn of funds from industry and households to government and back as
compensation, as well as higher-than-anticipated costs. He pointed to modelling
by Melbourne consultants Frontier Economics to warn that the CPRS could collect
up to $80billion a year that would need to be reallocated. "The scheme is all
stick and no carrot," he said. "If the design is wrong, we shouldn't do it."

Senator Xenophon said Australia should follow the Canadian model, which
granted concessions to lower greenhouse gas emitters. This would reduce churn
and allow for higher emission reduction targets. "What it does is encourage
investment in greener technology," he said. "The cleaner you are, the greater
level of credits you get. You don't have the same degree of churn because you
work at a level of energy intensity. "It's much simpler. You just don't get the
same price effect."

Agriculture Minister Tony Burke defended the
Government's proposals. "We've got the balance there in the Carbon Pollution
Reduction Scheme to make sure that industries can deal with the challenges of
the transition whilst making sure that Australia is part of the economy of the
future and can credibly argue for significant emissions reductions for the major
emitters around the world," Mr Burke said.

The minister sought to
highlight Coalition splits on emissions trading after Nationals Senate Leader
Barnaby Joyce told The Australian his party might vote against the Liberals on
the issue. "Malcolm Turnbull is willing to tolerate climate change sceptics and
a front bench which can't agree on anything," Mr Burke said. "He will tolerate a
Coalition partner that only votes with him when it feels like it." The
Opposition Leader denied that the Coalition partners were divided. "I've no
doubt that we will be responding to this legislation with one voice," Mr
Turnbull said.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

New Study Doesn't Support Climate Models (But
You'll Never Hear About It)

By cloud expert Roy Spencer. He finds
he has to do what I routinely did in my research career: Look at the "Results"
section of a scientific paper to see what was actually found. The Abstract and
Conclusion of a scientific paper in a politically sensitive area can often be
twisted to say the exact opposite of what the actual findings indicated. No
prizes for guessing the direction of the twist, either. Almost all scientists
work in a bureaucracy these days. Universities are big bureaucracies. And the
cardinal sin in any bureaucracy is to "rock the boat"

A new study
just published in the January 2009 issue of Journal of Climate uses a model to
study the effect of warming oceans on the extensive low-level stratocumulus
cloud layers that cover substantial parts of the global oceans. This study,
entitled "Response of a Subtropical Stratocumulus-Capped Mixed Layer to Climate
and Aerosol Changes", by Peter Caldwell and Christopher Bretherton, is important
because it represents a test of climate models, all of which now cause low level
clouds to decrease with warming.

And since less low cloud cover means
more sunlight reaching the surface, the small amount of direct warming from
extra CO2 in climate models gets amplified - greatly amplified in some models.
And the greater the strength of this `positive cloud feedback', the worse
manmade global warming and associated climate change will be.

But
everyone agrees that clouds are complicated beasts and it is not at all clear to
me that positive cloud feedback really exists in nature. (See here and here for
such evidence).

The new Journal of Climate study addressed the marine
stratocumulus clouds which form just beneath the temperature inversion (warm air
layer) capping the relatively cool boundary layer to the west of the continents.
The marine boundary layer is where turbulent mixing of water vapor evaporated
from the ocean surface gets trapped and some of that vapor condenses into cloud
just below the inversion.

That warm temperature inversion, in turn, is
caused by rising air in thunderstorms - usually far away - forcing the air above
the inversion to sink, and sinking air always warms. The inversion forms at a
relatively low altitude where the air is `prevented' from sinking any farther.
This relationship is shown in their Figure 1, which I have reproduced
below.

The authors used a fairly detailed model to study the behavior of
these clouds in response to warming of the ocean and found that the cloud liquid
water content increased with warming, under all simulated conditions. This, by
itself, would be a negative feedback (natural cooling effect) in response to the
warming since denser clouds will reflect more sunlight. At face value, then,
these results would not be supportive of positive cloud feedback in the climate
models.

But what is interesting is that the authors do not explicitly
make this connection. Even though they mention in the Introduction the
importance of their study to testing the behavior of climate models, in their
Conclusions they don’t mention whether the results support – or don’t support —
the climate models. And I would imagine they will not be happy with me making
that connection for them, either. They would probably say that their study is
just one part of a giant puzzle that doesn’t necessarily prove anything about
the climate models that predict so much global warming.

Fair enough. But
a double standard has clearly been established when it comes to publishing
studies related to global warming. Published studies that support climate model
predictions of substantial manmade global warming are clearly preferred over
those that do not support the models, and explicitly stating that support in the
studies is permitted. But results that appear to contradict the models either
can not get published…or (like in this study) the contradiction can not be
explicitly stated without upsetting one or more of the peer reviewers.

For instance, a paper I recently submitted to Geophysical Research
Letters was very rapidly rejected based upon only one reviewer who was asked to
review that paper. (I have never heard of a paper’s fate being left up to a
single reviewer, unless no other reviewers could be found, which clearly was not
the case in my situation). That reviewer was quite hostile to our
satellite-based results, which implied the climate models were wrong in their
cloud feedbacks.

One wonders whether support of climate models would
have been mentioned in the Caldwell and Bretherton paper if their results were
just the opposite, and supported the models. Of course, we will never
know.

They
talk about ecosystems but don't seem to be able to recognize one when they see
it -- so end up shooting themselves in the foot

Eradicating feral
cats on Australia's remote Macquarie Island has devastated the environment after
rabbit numbers exploded, a new study shows. The study says it will cost $24
million to fix the World Heritage-listed island located about halfway between
Australia and Antarctica. Scientists writing in the British Ecological Society's
Journal Of Applied Ecology, said conservation agencies could learn important
lessons from what happened on Macquarie Island.

According to the article,
rabbit numbers on the island were reduced from a high of 130,000 in 1978 to less
than 20,000 in the 1980s, after a program to spread the disease myxomatosis. But
as rabbit numbers fell, cats introduced in the early 1800s began to hunt the
island's native burrowing birds, and in 1985 a cat eradication program began.
After the last cat was killed in 2000, myxomatosis failed to keep rabbit numbers
in check and their numbers jumped. In little over six years, rabbits
substantially altered large areas of the island, the study found.

Dana
Bergstrom, who works for the Australian Antarctic Division and was lead author
of the report, said the rabbit population had reverted to 1978 levels, with up
to 130,000 on the island. By 2007 the impact on protected valleys and slopes was
acute, she said. "We estimate that nearly 40 per cent of the whole island area
had changed, with almost 20 per cent having moderate to severe change," Dr
Bergstrom said. About half of this vegetation change occurred on the island's
coastal slopes, home to penguin colonies. "Before, it was lush tussocks up to
1.5 metres high," Dr Bergstrom said. "In some of the most severe cases, the
tussocks have been eaten down to the ground."

The disappearance of the
tussocks has exposed penguin "roads" developed over hundreds of years by
penguins making their way from colonies to the beach. As a result, the penguins
were exposed to large predatory birds, called skuas, Dr Bergstrom said.

The study said changes documented were a rare example of "trophic
cascades", when changes in one species' abundance cause several other parts of
the food web to be altered. Macquarie Island, which is just 34 kilometres long
and five kilometres wide, was declared a World Heritage Site in 1997.

In a previous post
I discussed the way that the media hypes stories that support the theory of
anthropogenic global warming. They will take singular, odd weather events and
purport that they prove that catastrophic warming is happening. Similar events,
which lean the other way, are immediately dismissed and the media reminds
everyone that singular events don't prove anything. It's the double-standard
that bugs me.

One such example was the absurd Washington Post article
that had a headline connecting a tornado in New York City to warming. As I noted
that article seems to have vanished from the Washington Post site. So the
embarrassing article just disappeared from their site as if never
written.

But if you want pure chutzpah you have go to England's Met
Office. I saw a mention of these posts at Watts Up With That. but I found this
so astounding I had to verify each post myself.

Let's start with their
weather forecast from September, 2008. The Met "forecast for the coming winter
suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average."

Of course, as we reported, this
winter in England was particularly bitter. So what did the Met say later about
their earlier forecast? On December 12 the Met admits "that the UK has had the
coldest start to winter in over 30 years." No one will fault them for not
getting it right. But what I found astounding was that this statement claimed:
"The Met Office seasonal forecast predicted the cold start to the winter season
with milder conditions expected during January and February..."

That's chutzpah. They send out a
press statement claiming the winter will be mild and when they get it wrong they
send out another press statement claiming they predicted it would be unusually
cold. In the same statement they told everyone that January and February,
however, would be "milder" .

Unfortunately the beginning of January has
remained quite cold and didn't turn mild as they forecast. But never fear. The
Met Office released another press statement and ended it slapping themselves on
the back. "The Met Office correctly forecast the spell of cold weather and kept
the public informed via our various forecasts."

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and
more of us are trying to live a "greener" lifestyle. But the more "eco-friendly"
you try to become, the more likely you find yourself confused and frustrated by
the green message.

Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery
incandescent light bulbs to save energy only to learn that their
gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps
you've tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience
of disposable diapers only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy
and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support
for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry
environmentalists protest the development of "pristine lands" for wind farms and
solar power plants.

Why is it that no matter what sacrifices you make to
try to reduce your "environmental footprint," it never seems to be enough? Well,
consider why it is that you have an "environmental footprint" in the first
place.

Everything we do to sustain our lives has an impact on nature.
Every value we create to advance our well-being, every ounce of food we grow,
every structure we build, every iPhone we manufacture is produced by extracting
raw materials and reshaping them to serve our needs. Every good thing in our
lives comes from altering nature for our own benefit.

From the
perspective of human life and happiness, a big "environmental footprint" is an
enormous positive. This is why people in India and China are striving to
increase theirs: to build better roads, more cars and computers, new factories
and power plants and hospitals.

But for environmentalism, the size of
your "footprint" is the measure of your guilt. Nature, according to green
philosophy, is something to be left alone to be preserved untouched by human
activity. Their notion of an "environmental footprint" is intended as a measure
of how much you "disturb" nature, with disturbing nature viewed as a sin
requiring atonement. Just as the Christian concept of original sin conveys the
message that human beings are stained with evil simply for having been born, the
green concept of an "environmental footprint" implies that you should feel
guilty for your very existence.

It should hardly be any surprise, then,
that nothing you do to try to lighten your "footprint" will ever be deemed
satisfactory. So long as you are still pursuing life-sustaining activities,
whatever you do to reduce your impact on nature in one respect (e.g., cloth
diapers) will simply lead to other impacts in other respects (e.g., water use)
like some perverse game of green whack-a-mole and will be attacked and condemned
by greens outraged at whatever "footprint" remains. So long as you still have
some "footprint," further penance is required; so long as you are still alive,
no degree of sacrifice can erase your guilt.

The only way to leave no
"footprint" would be to die -- a conclusion that is not lost on many green
ideologues. Consider the premise of the nonfiction bestseller titled "The World
Without Us," which fantasizes about how the earth would "recover" if all
humanity suddenly became extinct. Or, consider the chilling, anti-human
conclusion of an op-ed discussing cloth versus disposable diapers: "From the
earth's point of view, it's not all that important which kind of diapers you
use. The important decision was having the baby." The next time you trustingly
adopt a "green solution" like fluorescent lights, cloth diapers or wind farms,
only to be puzzled when met with still further condemnation and calls for even
more sacrifices, remember what counts as a final solution for these ideologues.

The only rational response to such a philosophy is to challenge it at
its core. We must acknowledge that it is the essence of human survival to
reshape nature for our own benefit, and that far from being a sin, it is our
highest virtue. Don't be fooled by the cries that industrial civilization is
"unsustainable." This cry dates to at least the 19th century, but is belied by
the facts. Since the Industrial Revolution, population and life expectancy, to
say nothing of the enjoyment of life, have steadily grown. It is time to
recognize environmentalism as a philosophy of guilt and sacrifice and to reject
it in favor of a philosophy that proudly upholds the value of human
life.

NATIONALS firebrand Senator
Barnaby Joyce has launched a fresh attack on carbon emissions trading, drawing
parallels between environmentalists and Nazis. Senator Joyce warned of the rise
of "eco-totalitarianism" and said he would not be "goosestepping" along with
them.

The Federal Government plans to start emissions trading in 2010 to
reduce carbon pollution and take up the fight against climate
change.

"The idea that this scheme can go forward and no one's allowed to
question because there's a new form of eco-totalitarianism that demands blind
obedience, I think that is wrong," the Nationals Senate leader said on ABC radio
today. "One has to fall into lockstep, goosestep and parade around the office
ranting and raving that we are all as one?"

Senator Joyce rejected a
suggestion he was a climate change denier and drew a parallel with the
Holocaust, the murder of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis during World
War II. "Climate change denier, like Holocaust denier, this is the sort of
emotive language that has become stitched up in this (emissions trading) issue,"
he said. Senator Joyce said emissions trading would put Australians out of their
homes and out of jobs. And it would do nothing to counter climate change, he
said.

Senator Joyce's stance raises the possibility of a coalition split
with Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull yet to announce a position on emissions
trading. Some within the Coalition support taking action on climate change,
while others share Senator Joyce's reservations. The Government needs the
support of the Coalition to pass its scheme through the Senate, or it will have
to rely on the Greens and independents, a prospect not welcomed by the business
lobby.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Barack Obama's polluted mind

How
far do politicians believe they can push the global-warming scam? We know, after
his inauguration, Barack Obama intends to officially classify carbon dioxide as
a "dangerous pollutant." After such a declaration, his actions will reveal
whether he truly views carbon dioxide as a threat to humanity or whether he is
simply using a shameless scare tactic to further consolidate Federal power and
to move the U.S. further along the road to socialism. If carbon dioxide is
incredibly dangerous as Al Gore and Barack Obama claim it to be, then all
options, for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, must be considered.

Once
President Obama declares carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant, every
single American brewery, winery, and distillery will be, by definition, a
"dangerous polluter." Thus, if manmade carbon dioxide output must be drastically
reduced to save the planet and humanity itself, then President Obama must
strongly consider reinstating alcohol prohibition in these United States. Al
Gore, to date, hasn't had the guts to push the global-warming scam to the point
of suggesting global alcohol prohibition and I highly doubt President Obama has
the guts to do so in the U.S. Both of these political hacks, after all, are
socialists and certainly are not in love with Mother Earth and humanity, but
with power and celebrity.

Anyone with a fifth-grade education
understands that the fermentation process is integral to producing alcoholic
beverages. In the fermentation process, yeast interacts with sugars to create
ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. Uh oh, there is that evil "pollutant" carbon
dioxide. Who would have ever guessed the wonderful wines, beers, and distilled
spirits we enjoy so much are born from pollution? Come to think of it, the beers
and champagnes populating store shelves everywhere still contain carbon dioxide.
By Barack Obama's definition, I would be drinking a dangerous pollutant every
time I enjoy one of my favorite ales. Should I consult a doctor before drinking
pollution? Even if prohibition prevents me from drinking polluted adult
beverages, in the future, what about soda pops and naturally-carbonated
sparkling waters? Should these polluted beverages be banned as well? Perhaps
President Obama will provide us with some guidelines about ingesting pollution.

If President Obama (and Al Gore for that matter) sincerely believes
carbon dioxide poses such a dire threat to Mother Earth and humanity, then the
carbon dioxide emissions from breweries, wineries, and distilleries would be
viewed as a serious problem. In the United States alone, annual wine production
is about 2.44 billion liters while annual beer production is approximately 23
billion liters. Throw in distilled spirits and it is inescapable to conclude
that a whole lot of manmade carbon dioxide is being generated by wineries,
breweries and distilleries. Once President Obama pronounces carbon dioxide to be
a dangerous pollutant, what will he do about the "pollution" emanating from
breweries, wineries, and distilleries?

The first thing President Obama
should do is to lead by example and ban all alcoholic beverages from the White
House (Al Gore should do the same in his household). Secondly, he and Al Gore
should create a national awareness as to the polluting nature of the
adult-beverage industry with the objective of building a consensus to bring back
prohibition in order to save our planet and the human race. These two shrill
politicians have asserted that the stakes are quite literally this supremely
high, hence foregoing alcoholic beverages is a sacrifice all Americans should be
prepared to make. For goodness' sake, our planet is at stake!

Let's take
Barack Obama's absurd assertion, that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant,
one step further. By using Obama's "logic," life itself is built upon pollution.
It makes me wonder, once again, if our new President is smarter than a fifth
grader. For if one is familiar with photosynthesis - and most fifth graders are
- it is a process of converting light energy to chemical energy and storing it
in the bonds of sugar. Plants only need light energy, carbon dioxide and water
to make the aforementioned sugar. Photosynthesis, which cannot take place
without carbon dioxide, occurs in plants (and a few bacteria) and is responsible
for feeding nearly all life on Earth. But let's not stop there. Another vital
function photosynthesis performs pertains to generating the very oxygen which
oxygen-breathing animals require for survival. So let's get this straight Mr.
Obama, you believe the life-giving process of photosynthesis is built upon
pollution? If this is your firm conviction, then you have left me wondering if
enough oxygen is making it to your brain.

Yet what I do know now is that
the gospel, according to Barack Obama, avows that life itself is dependent upon
pollution. How utterly surreal.

Barack Obama, Al Gore, and politicians
around the world are using global warming, and the outrageous lie that carbon
dioxide is a pollutant, to increase state power and, thereby, reduce human
liberty. It is an incredibly powerful scam which is frightening people into
willingly giving up their freedoms in exchange for "saving" the planet.
Therefore, step by step, country by country, the global-warming scare is helping
politicians pave the road to socialism.

So why don't we hear American,
British, French, German and other politicians calling for the shuttering of
breweries, distilleries, and wineries (or at least taxing their products into
oblivion)? It is the same reason you will never hear an American politician call
for a $100/hour minimum wage or for sending every adult American a $1,000,000
stimulus check. Taking a scam too far leads to intense examination and exposes
the scammers for the frauds they are. Hence, gunning after wine, beer, and
spirits makers would undoubtedly create such a backlash, against the
global-warming charlatans, that the scam wouldn't hold up under such mass
scrutiny. After all, if you are compelling people to give up alcohol - to help
save the planet - then the science had better be extremely sound. Questionable
science, built upon faulty computer models, simply won't cut it.

As
Barack Obama, using parts of FDR's playbook, attempts to lead us further down
the road to socialism, be assured global warming will be used as a weapon to
mentally terrorize Americans into further exchanging liberty for "safety." It is
a near-certainty, nonetheless, that breweries, distilleries, and wineries will
not be deemed "dangerous polluters" in spite of the fact carbon dioxide is a
byproduct of fermentation. To be sure, this will expose the hypocrisy of
politicians, such as Obama. And, it will also reveal the grandiose concept, of
saving the Earth from global warming, is nothing more than a ruse designed to
help governments grab more power.

In George Reisman's phenomenal book
Capitalism, he describes why socialists such as Al Gore, Barrack Obama, and for
that matter Arnold Schwarzenegger (who has turned out to be a greenie) will
leave adult-beverage makers alone - in spite of their prodigious carbon dioxide
emissions:

It follows that the rulers of a socialist state must live in
terror of the people. By the logic of their actions and their teachings, the
boiling seething resentment of the people should well up and swallow them in
an orgy of bloody vengeance. The rulers sense this, even if they do not admit
it openly; and thus their major concern is always to keep the lid on the
citizenry.

Indeed, Barrack Obama's mind may be polluted with
contradictions and megalomania, but he and his ilk are savvy enough to have
learned the lessons from America's failed experiment with alcohol prohibition
(combined with the fact that anthropogenic global warming is supported by flimsy
science). Accordingly, it is much easier to keep the lid on a citizenry
permitted to legally self-medicate with alcohol - especially during the present
economic depression - than to draw the ire of citizens forced to seek adult
beverages on the black market. So raise your glass of wine and say "cheers" to
Barack Obama: our new Hypocrite-in-Chief.

The plasma screen television is poised to become the
next victim of the battle to curb energy use. Giant energy-guzzling flatscreens
are expected to be banned under legislation due to be agreed by the EU this
spring. Plasma screens have been nicknamed the '4x4s' of the living room because
they use up to four times as much electricity and are responsible for up to four
times as much carbon dioxide as traditional cathode ray tube sets.

The
most energy intensive will be phased out under the new EU standards for minimum
energy performance, which will follow the voluntary withdrawal of the
traditional 100watt light bulb. The remaining TVs of all types will have to
carry energy rating labels designed to make it easy to distinguish between the
best and worst performers. LCD flat screen TVs are much more energy efficient
than their plasma cousins so are unlikely to be banned. A 42in LCD TV uses
similar amounts of energy to a much smaller traditional set. A spokesman for the
Department-for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the plasma TV would not
be banned completely, with eco-friendly sets remaining on the market.

The
moves are part of an effort to tackle climate change by stemming the spiralling
electricity consumption in households. It involves phasing out wasteful devices
and introducing low-energy alternatives. Families have nearly three times as
many electrical appliances and gadgets as a generation ago and the amount of
electricity used to power them has doubled. Today Britain has 60million
television sets - one for every person in the country. Plasma screens, which are
common in pubs and supermarkets, as well as in homes, are among the most popular
buys.

A Defra spokesman said that in the past five years the main TV in
many households has changed from being a 24-32in cathode ray model to a 32-42
flatscreen TV.

About 10 watts output at a guess. But Japan makes a good
living out of selling gimmicks to praise-seekers

THE new version of the world's
biggest selling petrol-electric car will be partly powered by the sun. The third
generation Toyota Prius, unveiled at the Detroit motor show overnight, will be
available with a solar panel sunroof when it goes on sale in Australia in June
priced from $40,000.

The solar system runs an air circulation fan which
cools the car while it is parked, and it can be activated by a remote control so
the cabin is cool before you drive off.

All of which brings me on to
the curious case of the battery-powered Tesla sports car that I reviewed
recently on Top Gear. Things didn't go well. The company claimed it could run,
even if driven briskly, for 200 miles, but after just a morning the battery
power was down to 20% and we realised that it would not have enough juice for
all the shots we needed. Happily, the company had brought a second car along, so
we switched to that. But after a while its motor began to overheat. And so, even
though the first was not fully charged, we unplugged it - only to find that its
brakes weren't working properly. So then we had no cars.

Inevitably, the
film we had shot was a bit of a mess. There was a handful of shots of a silver
car. Some of a grey car. And only half the usual gaggle of nonsense from me
shouting "Power" and making silly metaphors. And to make matters worse, we had
the BBC's new compliance directive hanging over us like an enormous suffocating
blanket. We had to be sure that what we said and what we showed was more than
right, more than fair and more than accurate. Phone calls were made. Editorial
policy wallahs were consulted. Experts were called in. No "i" was left undotted.
No "t" was left uncrossed. No stone remained unturned in our quest for truth and
decency.

Tesla could not complain about what was shown because it was
there. And here's the strange thing. It didn't. But someone did. Loudly and to
every newspaper in the world. The Daily Telegraph said we'd been caught up in a
new fakery row. The Guardian accused us of being "underhanded". The New York
Times wondered if we'd been "misleading". The Daily Mail said I could give you
breast cancer.

This was weird. Tesla, when contacted by reporters, gave
its account of what happened and it was exactly the same as ours. It explained
that the brakes had stopped working because of a blown fuse and didn't question
at all our claim that the car would have run out of electricity after 55 miles.

So who was driving this onslaught? Nobody in the big wide world ever
minds when I say a BMW 1-series is crap or that a Kia Rio is the worst piece of
machinery since the landmine. And yet everyone went mad when I said the Tesla,
the red-blooded sports car and great white hope for the world's green movement,
"absolutely does not work".

I fear that what we are seeing here is much
the same thing professors see when they claim there is no such thing as man-made
global warming. Immediately, they are drowned out by an unseen mob, and then
their funding dries up. It's actually quite frightening.

The problem is,
though, that really and honestly, the US-made Tesla works only at dinner
parties. Tell someone you have one and in minutes you will be having sex. But as
a device for moving you and your things around, it is about as much use as a bag
of muddy spinach.

Yes, it is extremely fast. It's all out of ideas at
125mph, but the speed it gets there is quite literally electrifying. For
instance, 0 to 60 takes 3.9sec. This is because a characteristic of the electric
motor, apart from the fact it's the size of a grapefruit and has only one moving
part, is massive torque.

And quietness. At speed, there's a deal of tyre
roar and plenty of wind noise from the ill-fitting soft top, but at a
town-centre crawl it's silent. Eerily so. Especially as you are behind a rev
counter showing numbers that have no right to be there - 15,000, for example.

Through the corners things are less rosy. To minimise rolling resistance
and therefore increase range, the wheels have no toe-in or camber. This affects
the handling. So too does the sheer weight of the 6,831 laptop batteries, all of
which have to be constantly cooled. But slightly wonky handling is nothing
compared with this car's big problems. First of all, it costs 90,000 pounds.
This means it is three times more than the Lotus Elise, on which it is loosely
based, and 90,000 times more than it is actually worth. Yes, that cost will come
down when the Hollywood elite have all bought one and the factory can get into
its stride. But paying 90,000 for such a thing now indicates that you believe in
goblins and fairy stories about the end of the world.

Of course, it will
not be expensive to run. Filling a normal Elise with petrol costs 40 pounds.
Filling a Tesla with cheap-rate electricity costs just 3.50. And that's enough
to take you - let's be fair - somewhere between 55 and 200 miles, depending on
how you drive. But if it's running costs you are worried about, consider this.
The 60,000 or so you save by buying an Elise would buy 15,000 gallons of fuel.
Enough to take you round the world 20 times. And there's more. Filling an Elise
takes two minutes. Filling a Tesla from a normal 13-amp plug takes about 16
hours. Fit a beefier three-phase supply to your house and you could complete the
process in four (Tesla now says 3«). But do not, whatever you do, imagine that
you could charge your car from a domestic wind turbine. That would take about 25
days.

You see what I mean. Even if we ignore the argument that the
so-called green power that propels this car comes from a dirty great power
station, and that it is therefore not as green as you might hope, we are left
with the simple fact that it takes a long time to charge it up and the charge
doesn't take you very far. We must also remember that both the cars I tried went
wrong.

In the fullness of time, I have no doubt that the Tesla can be
honed and chiselled and developed to a point where the problems are gone. But
time is one thing a car such as this does not have. Because while Tesla fiddles
about with batteries, Honda and Ford are surging onwards with hydrogen cars,
which don't need charging, can be fuelled normally and are completely green. The
biggest problem, then, with the Tesla is not that it doesn't work. It's that
even if it did, it would be driving down the wrong road.

The pastoralist nephew of one of Queensland's richest men
believes he was "crucified" by false scientific claims that he had been
developing his property to take water illegally from the last free-flowing river
in the Murray-Darling Basin. The University of NSW has admitted the research
accusing Jake Berghofer was funded by opponents of irrigation development, and
has been forced to back away from the findings by some of its most senior
scientists.

Mr Berghofer said he had been "crucified" by the findings of
the university's School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences that he
had breached a moratorium on the Paroo River. "It's not right that a big
university can get away with trying to destroy someone who hasn't done anything
wrong," Mr Berghofer said. His uncle, Toowoomba businessman Clive Berghofer, who
has an estimated fortune of $327 million, saidhis nephew had been shabbily
treated. "Jake is a very hard worker and he hasn't done anything wrong," he
said.

An investigation by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources
and Water concluded that a series of findings in the UNSW study were wrong. The
study claimed that irrigation works on Mr Berghofer's property, Springvale,
south of Eulo, breached a 2003 agreement between the Queensland and NSW
governments to protect the Paroo, the only river in the Murray-Darling Basin
with no irrigation. The study said satellite imaging last year showed that since
a moratorium on irrigation works was introduced for the Paroo in 2001, a new
channel system had been developed on the property and a 21ha water storage
built. It said that of nine storages on Springvale, only three were visible in
satellite imaging produced in 2002. "All but two of the levee banks that existed
in 2002 had new works around their perimeter that might increase storage
capacity," it said.

The study triggered an avalanche of criticism of Mr
Berghofer when itwas released late last year, with South Australian Premier Mike
Rann describing the irrigation works as an "act of terrorism". However, the
state investigation concluded that all the works referred to in the report were
either completed or approved before the 2001 moratorium. Queensland Natural
Resources Minister Craig Wallace said there were no breaches of the Paroo River
agreement and that Mr Berghofer had done nothing wrong.

Richard
Kingsford, who oversaw the study, conceded that the irrigation works identified
on the property might have been legal, and that the agreement might not have
been breached. "That could be the case but I think there is still a potential
breach," Professor Kingsford said. "Even if it's legal, we still should be
concerned about irrigation in the only Murray-Darling system river that is
undeveloped." Professor Kingsford said the study was funded by the NSW-based
Australian Floodplain Association, a fierce critic of irrigation upstream in the
Queensland sector of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Paroo River Association
president Robert Bartlett said the Queensland Government was "covering up" for
Mr Berghofer. "The Paroo is in near pristinecondition and it should be able to
remain that way," Mr Bartlett said. But Mr Berghofer said the irrigation work
identified by the university was intended only to stop storage leakages; that it
was covered by government permits; and that it was located nowhere near the
Paroo River. "I'm a small bloke trying to grow a bit of hay and they've tried to
crucify me," he said. Mr Berghofer said Professor Kingsford and other critics
had ignored invitations to visit his property.

In June, the three-year
Sustainable Rivers Audit found that of the basin's 23 rivers, only the Paroo in
western Queensland was in good health.

Monday, January 12, 2009

GKSS scientists refute argument of climate
skeptics (?)

A strange "refutation". Nobody denies that there was
a small warming recorded for the Northern hemisphere in the second half of the
20th century. The question is what caused that recorded warming. The sun,
heat-island effects, other cyclic factors or random factors? Although they are
by definition unlikely, "runs" in random sequences are not at all unknown. Such
runs are one of the main reasons why gamblers stay hooked. And the big question
is the reliability of the aggregated ground-based thermometer measurements. I
append below two emailed comments on that from Lord Monckton and Vincent
Gray

Between 1880 and 2006 the average global annual temperature was
about 15øC. However, in the years after 1990 the frequency of years when this
average value was exceeded increased. The GKSS Research Centre asks: is it an
accident that the warmest 13 years were observed after 1990, or does this
increased frequency indicate an external influence?

With the help of the
so called ,Monte-Carlo-Simulation" the coastal researchers Dr. Eduardo Zorita
and Professor Hans von Storch at the GKSS-Research Centre together with
Professor Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern estimated that it is
extremely unlikely that the frequency of warm record years after 1990 could be
an accident and concluded that it is rather influenced by a external
driver.

The fact that the 13 warmest years since 1880 could have accured
by accident after 1990 corresponds to a likelihood of no more than 1:10 000.
These likelihood can be illustrated by using the game of chance "heads or
tails": the likelihood is the same as 14 heads in a row.

,In order to
understand and statistically analyse the climate system and its interaction
between the ocean, land, atmosphere and human activity, the comparison with a
game of chance is no longer sufficient. The natural sequence of warm and cold
years no longer functions according to the simple principle of ,zero or one",
explains the GKSS scientist Dr. Eduardo Zorita about the challenges of his
calculations, because the climate system possesses some inertia.

An
example: After a warm year milder years tend to follow, since the oceans have
stored some heat. This natural inertia must also be included in the
calculations. "Our study is pure statistical nature and can not attribute the
increase of warm years to individual factors, but is in full agreement with the
results of the IPCC that the increased emission of green house gases is mainly
responsible for the most recent global warming", says Zorita in
summary.

As
Joe d'Aleo has pointed out, 1990 was the year when the former Soviet Union fell
apart, taking very large numbers of rural stations out of the temperature
datasets. Given the way the data are averaged to produce a single global anomaly
each month or year, the effect of removing large numbers of rural stations with
small temperature increases was to cause a sudden and startling jump in
temperatures in 1990. Anthony Watts' work on temperature stations has shown what
a nonsense they are, and Ross McKitrick has shown that all
of the datasets, even the satellite ones, are showing temperature increase
patterns that correlate in a statistically significant way with economic
development patterns[Evidence of heat output direct from human
activities, not of a greenhouse effect]. So what is really being measured is
the direct output of heat by the exothermic activities of humankind, rather than
the probably-negligible radiative forcing from greenhouse-gas enrichment.

My purpose in reviewing all this is to ask whether anyone knows enough
about the compilation of the temperature records to say whether the heat-island
effects are subtracted, in an attempt to restore the readings that might have
occurred if the region around the station had not become urbanized, or
redistributed, so as to reflect the fact that all that direct heat output -
amplified by net-positive temperature feedbacks just as radiatively-forced
temperature increases would be - is actually going into the atmosphere. I did an
energy budget calculation based on this exothermic activity once, and got quite
a surprise: it accounted for 0.1-0.2 C of the increase in global temperatures
since 1980 - not too far out of line with McKitrick's finding. If I'm right
about this, then the world is addressing the wrong problem, and all those
windmills will actually be adding to "global warming", as well as killing off
millions of rare birds.

Gray

I have made a particular
study of this subject but am not able to give a complete answer. I deal with
some of it in my "Global Scam"
paper where I show that the main papers quoted by the IPCC justifying a
belief that the urban effect is negligible are fraudulent. I deduce from this
that they either make no adjustment at present or a very small one. On the other
hand in the Brohan et al paper, which is the last comprehensive one, they claim
to apply the "homogenization" technique of the US GHCN who have a whole set of
corrections, most of which could not possibly apply anywhere else but the USA,
and which Peterson fraudulently claimed did not include an urbanization
correction. The largest correction he found was the "Time of Observation Bias"
which arises because they measure the maximum and minimum once a day at a
different time in different places, and sometimes in the same place, referring
to a different 24 hours for each.

On the other hand there have been
places that measure temperatures several times a day for some years,. Canada for
one, and there are now many which measure continuously by an automatic system,
If they want to be compatible with the past they must surely forget everything
except the maximum and minimum, but do they?

There has been no warming
in New Zealand since 1950 and if you believe Christchurch, the hottest year was
1917. The "corrected" temperature for the USA shows that the maximum was 1934.

Many fairly reliable local records show no overall warming. The record I
was given from China, claimed to have been "homogenized" and also shows no
overall warming. The puzzling feature of their graph is that it includes a
subset from Hadley that agrees with theirs. So the "warming" of Hadley may
result exclusively from the unreliable records from the major part of the world
which cannot have the benefits of "homogenization"; including of course, the
Russians where they closed down urban stations,and stopped the wages of the
operatives so they were reluctant to get up and make the readings on a cold day.

The publicity that Roger Pielke Sr and his meteorologists and Antony
Watts and his Google Earth ground level, about the inadequacy of siting of met
instruments have put them on their mettle. They now actually let us see
photographs of their sites. This may be one reason why the global temperature
records from the surface and from the satellites seem to be mysteriously merging
to give the same answers. Stauffer et al are merely carrying out a last ditch
stand before everybody wakes up to what has been going on.

Trying to
find out the exact circumstances under which meteorological measurements were
carried out in obscure parts of the world over the past 100 years is likely to
be a bit futile. All we know is they seem to have got their act
together.

The nonsense never ceases

IF you
want to help save the planet from carbon carnage, cut your Google searches,
scientists say. Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can
generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup
of tea, according to new research, The Australian reports. While millions of
people tap into Google without a thought for the environment, a typical search
generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. "Google
operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,"
said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the
environmental impact of computing is due out soon. "A Google search has a
definite environmental impact."

Google is secretive about its energy
consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of
its dozens of data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches
estimated globally every day, the level of electricity consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking
concern.

A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the
global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines -
about 2 per cent of global CO2 emissions. "Data centres are among the most
energy-intensive facilities imaginable," said Evan Mills, a scientist at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing
billions of web pages require power both to run and cool them.

Though
Google says it is in the forefront of green computing, its search engine
generates high levels of CO2 because of the way it operates. When you type in a
Google search for, say, "energy saving tips", your request doesn't go to just
one server. It goes to several competing against each other. It may even be sent
to servers thousands of miles apart. Google's infrastructure sends you data from
whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimises delays but raises
energy consumption....

Google Australia told News.com.au it has built the
most energy-efficient data centres in the world. "Our data centres use
considerably less energy for the servers themselves, and much less energy for
cooling, than a typical data centre. As a result, the energy used per Google
search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own
personal computer will use more energy than we will use to answer your query.

The author below -- Gregory F. Fegel --
appears to be some sort of Leftist from Oregon but the fact that he had to go to
Russia to get his article published reflects the widespread skepticism about
global warming in Russia. They are more worried about imminent cooling, for
reasons that are perhaps obvious. At any event, the article below is a
reasonable summary of the historical evidence

The earth is now on the
brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of
evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which
provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm,
twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end,
and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of
ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of
Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by
intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.

Most of
the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong
correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the
Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth,
which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth's orbit, which
changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes,
also known as the earth's `wobble', which gradually rotates the direction of the
earth's axis over a period of 26,000 years. According to the Milankovich theory
of Ice Age causation, these three astronomical cycles, each of which effects the
amount of solar radiation which reaches the earth, act together to produce the
cycle of cold Ice Age maximums and warm interglacials.

Elements of the
astronomical theory of Ice Age causation were first presented by the French
mathematician Joseph Adhemar in 1842, it was developed further by the English
prodigy Joseph Croll in 1875, and the theory was established in its present form
by the Czech mathematician Milutin Milankovich in the 1920s and 30s. In 1976 the
prestigious journal "Science" published a landmark paper by John Imbrie, James
Hays, and Nicholas Shackleton entitled "Variations in the Earth's orbit:
Pacemaker of the Ice Ages," which described the correlation which the trio of
scientist/authors had found between the climate data obtained from ocean
sediment cores and the patterns of the astronomical Milankovich cycles. Since
the late 1970s, the Milankovich theory has remained the predominant theory to
account for Ice Age causation among climate scientists, and hence the
Milankovich theory is always described in textbooks of climatology and in
encyclopaedia articles about the Ice Ages.

In their 1976 paper Imbrie,
Hays, and Shackleton wrote that their own climate forecasts, which were based on
sea-sediment cores and the Milankovich cycles, ". must be qualified in two ways.
First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and
not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to
orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic
oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted... the results indicate
that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive
Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate."

During the 1970s the
famous American astronomer Carl Sagan and other scientists began promoting the
theory that `greenhouse gasses' such as carbon dioxide, or CO2, produced by
human industries could lead to catastrophic global warming. Since the 1970s the
theory of `anthropogenic global warming' (AGW) has gradually become accepted as
fact by most of the academic establishment, and their acceptance of AGW has
inspired a global movement to encourage governments to make pivotal changes to
prevent the worsening of AGW.

The central piece of evidence that is
cited in support of the AGW theory is the famous `hockey stick' graph which was
presented by Al Gore in his 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth." The `hockey
stick' graph shows an acute upward spike in global temperatures which began
during the 1970s and continued through the winter of 2006/07. However, this
warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest
snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures
since 2001. It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of
2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth
and cold temperatures.

The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its
proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most,
while ignoring the evidence from the past million years -- evidence which is
essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from
paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation
for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age
maximums and interglacials.

In 1999 the British journal "Nature"
published the results of data derived from glacial ice cores collected at the
Russia 's Vostok station in Antarctica during the 1990s. The Vostok ice core
data includes a record of global atmospheric temperatures, atmospheric CO2 and
other greenhouse gases, and airborne particulates starting from 420,000 years
ago and continuing through history up to our present time.

The graph of
the Vostok ice core data (See here)
shows that the Ice Age maximums and the warm interglacials occur within a
regular cyclic pattern, the graph-line of which is similar to the rhythm of a
heartbeat on an electrocardiogram tracing. The Vostok data graph also shows that
changes in global CO2 levels lag behind global temperature changes by about
eight hundred years. What that indicates is that global temperatures precede or
cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse. In other words, increasing
atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperature to rise; instead the natural
cyclic increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise.

The
reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global
temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm
water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when
stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft dri nks, wine, and
beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their `fizz', which is a
feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as
a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they
release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Because the
release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth's
temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for
another eight hundred years after the end of the earth's current Interglacial
warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age
before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of
the world's oceans.

The Vostok ice core data graph reveals that global
CO2 levels regularly rose and fell in a direct response to the natural cycle of
Ice Age minimums and maximums during the past four hundred and twenty thousand
years. Within that natural cycle, about every 110,000 years global temperatures,
followed by global CO2 levels, have peaked at approximately the same levels
which they are at today.

About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm
interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today.
Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and
the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a
few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its
regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of
AGW.

The AGW theory is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously
narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the `big picture'
of long-term climate change. The data from paleoclimatology, including ice
cores, sea sediments, geology, paleobotany and zoology, indicate that we are on
the verge of entering another Ice Age, and the data also shows that severe and
lasting climate change can occur within only a few years. While concern over the
dubious threat of Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to distract the
attention of people throughout the world, the very real threat of the
approaching and inevitable Ice Age, which will render large parts of the
Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable, is being foolishly ignored.

New study from
mainstream scientists identifies changes at the glacial periphery -- such as
changing ocean currents -- as the key factor in glacial change

The
recent acceleration of glacier melt-off in Greenland, which some scientists fear
could dramatically raise sea levels, may only be a temporary phenomenon,
according to a study published Sunday. Researchers in Britain and the United
States devised computer models to test three scenarios that could account for
rapid -- by the standards applied to glaciers -- loss of mass from the Helheim
Glacier, one of Greenland's largest.

Two were based on changes caused
directly by global warming: an increase in the amount of water that greases the
underbelly of the glacier as it slides toward the sea, and a general thinning
due to melting. If confirmed, either of these explanations would point to a
sustained increase in runoff over the coming decades, fueling speculation that
sea level could rise faster and higher than once thought.

The stakes are
enormous: the rate at which the global ocean water mark rises could have a
devastating impact on hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying areas
around the world. But a team led by Andreas Vieli and Faezeh Nick of Durham
University in Britain found that neither of these scenarios matched the data.
"They simply don't fit what we have observed," said Vieli in an interview. By
contrast, the third computer model -- which hypothesised that melt-off was
triggered by changing conditions in the confined area where the glacier meets
the sea -- fit like a glove, he said. "Whatever happens at the terminus provokes
a strong and rapid reaction in the rest of the glacier. The result has been a
significant loss of mass" as huge chunks of ice drop into the ocean, a process
known as calving, Vieli explained.

These changes are also set in motion
by global warming, but are not likely to last, he said. "You cannot maintain
these very high rates of peak mass loss for very long. The glaciers start to
retreat and settle into a new an relatively stable state," he said.

The
Helheim Glacier, along with several others in Greenland, started to slow down in
2007. Vieli also noted that the data alarming the scientific community only
covers a span of a few years. It may be ill-advised, he suggested, to project a
trend on the basis of what may turn out to be a short-term phenomenon.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in
2007 that sea levels could creep up by 18 to 59 centimetres (7.2 to 23.2 inches)
by 2100 due to thermal expansion driven by global warming. Such an increase
would be enough to wipe out several small island nations and seriously disrupt
mega-deltas home in Asia and Africa. But IPCC failed to take into account recent
studies on the observed and potential impact of the melting ice sheets in
Greenland and Antarctica, prompting the Nobel-winning body to later remove the
upward bracket from its end-of-century forecast.

A new consensus has
formed among experts that levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100,
according to Mark Serreze of the National No w and Ice Data Center in Boulder,
Colorodo. "What has puzzled us is that the changes are even faster than we would
have though possible," he said in a recent interview.

Vieli cautioned
that his findings, published in Nature Geoscience, are narrowly focused on one
glacier, and that sea levels could still rise higher than the IPCC's original
projections. Other Greenland glaciers behave differently, and the dynamics of
the Antarctic ice sheet are still poorly understood, he noted. Nor should the
new study "be taken out of context to suggest that climate change is not a
serious threat -- it is," he added. The ice sitting atop Greenland could lift
oceans by seven metres, though even the gloomiest of climate change projections
do not include such a scenario.

One of
the most widely discussed climate feedbacks is the albedo effect of polar sea
ice loss. Ice has a relatively high albedo (reflectance) so a reduction in polar
ice area has the effect of causing more shortwave radiation (sunlight) to be
absorbed by the oceans, warming the water. Likewise, an increase in polar sea
ice area causes more sunlight to be reflected, decreasing the warming of the
ocean. The earths radiative balance is shown in the image below. It is believed
that about 30% of the sunlight reaching the earth's atmosphere is directly
reflected - 20% by clouds, 6% by other components of the atmosphere, and 4% by
the earth's surface.

We all have heard many times that summer sea ice
minimums have declined in the northern hemisphere over the last 30 years. As
mentioned above, this causes more sunlight to reach the dark ocean water, and
results in a warming of the water. What is not so widely discussed is that
southern hemisphere sea ice has been increasing, causing a net cooling effect.
This article explains why the cooling effect of excess Antarctic ice is
significantly greater than the warming effect of missing Arctic ice.

Over the last 30 years Antarctic sea ice has been steadily increasing,
as shown below.

December is
the month when the Antarctic sun is highest in the sky, and when the most
sunlight reaches the surface. Thus an excess of ice in December has the maximum
impact on the southern hemisphere's radiative balance. In the Antarctic, the
most important months are mid-October through mid-February, because those are
months when the sun is closest to the zenith. The rest of the year there is
almost no shortwave radiation to reflect, so the excess ice has little effect on
the shortwave radiative (SW) balance.

This has been discussed in detail
by Roger Pielke Sr. and others in several papers. see here and here

So
how does this work? Below are the details of this article's thesis.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Peter Hitchens joins the
fray

Like his brother Christopher, he doesn't mince words. He is
referring below to a news report that a wind turbine was attacked and damaged by
a UFO:

If visitors from another galaxy really are going round
destroying wind turbines, then it is the proof we have been waiting for that
aliens are more intelligent than we are. The swivel-eyed, intolerant cult, which
endlessly shrieks - without proof - that global warming is man-made, has
produced many sad effects. The collapse of proper education has made two whole
generations vulnerable to rubbishy fads.

But the disfiguring of the
country with useless windmills, and the insane plan to ban proper light bulbs,
are supreme triumphs of this dimwit pseudo-religion. Both schemes override facts
and logic. During the current cold spell, observant persons will have noticed
that there has been very little wind, a rather common combination. Thus, at a
time of great need for power, wind turbines would be almost entirely useless for
producing electricity. They're pretty feeble anyway. Even when they are working,
sensible power stations have to be kept spinning, so that they can be flung into
gear at short notice if the wind drops.

Yet, over the objections of
reasonable protesters fearing for the ruined landscape, or dreading the annoying
whine and whirr, the authorities have marched over the once-lovely hills and
moors of Britain, planting grotesque and futile engines. In intervals between
erecting these daft objects, the Government (influenced by the awful EU) has
also colluded in a plan to stop the sale of traditional light bulbs.

This
is even though the supposed replacements are expensive, don't reduce electricity
use anything like as much as claimed, won't fit many existing lamps, won't work
with dimmers, in many cases give off a light as cheery and bright as the baleful
glow emitted by a decomposing dingo, won't work in fridges, don't last as long
as claimed, and when they do go phut, must be disposed of with tongs because
they contain deadly mercury vapour. This is the price we pay for fanaticism, and
for a low-grade political class without the courage to stand up against it.

True, it takes a little nerve to oppose this lobby. But if you don't
have that sort of nerve, you shouldn't be in politics in the first
place.

Excerpt from Speech Delivered on U.S.
Senate Floor January 8, 2009 by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) - Ranking Member,
Environment and Public Works Committee

I have given over 12 floor
speeches on the science of global warming. Today, I want to update my colleagues
on some of the latest science that has not been reported in the mainstream
media. ... Many politically left-of-center scientists and environmental
activists are now realizing that the so-called "consensus" on man-made global
warming is not holding up. It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism
about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right issue. In
fact, many scientists and activists who are also progressive environmentalists
believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" or "hijacked" the green movement.

The left-wing blog Huffington Post surprised many by featuring an
article on January 3, 2009, by Harold Ambler, demanding an apology from Gore for
promoting unfounded global warming fears. The Huffington Post article accused
Gore of telling "the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of
humankind" because he claimed the science was settled on global warming. The
Huffington Post article titled "Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted" adds, "It is Mr.
Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers," not the skeptics. Again, it is not
Jim Inhofe calling Gore a "flat-Earther," it is the left-wing blog Huffington
Post calling him these things.

The Huffington Post article continues,
"Let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a
pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering
continues unabated, day after day."

UK atmospheric scientist Richard
Courtney, a left-of-political center socialist, is another dissenter of man-made
climate fears. Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and
atmospheric science consultant, is a self-described socialist who also happens
to reject man-made climate fears. Courtney declared in 2008 that there is "no
correlation between the anthropogenic emissions of GHG (greenhouse gases) and
global temperature."

Joining Courtney are many other progressive
environmentalist scientists: Former Greenpeace member and Finnish scientist Dr.
Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a lecturer of environmental technology and a chemical engineer
at Abo Akademi University in Finland who has authored 200 scientific
publications, is also skeptical of man-made climate doom. Ahlbeck wrote in 2008,
"Contrary to common belief, there has been no or little global warming since
1995 and this is shown by two completely independent datasets. But so far, real
measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming."

Life-long liberal Democrat Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy
meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry, also declared his dissent of
warming fears in 2008. "As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find
the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about
human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science," Hertzberg wrote.
"The global warming alarmists don't even bother with data! All they have are
half-baked computer models that are totally out of touch with reality and have
already been proven to be false," Hertzberg added.

Ivy League Geologist
Dr. Robert Giegengack, the former chair of Department of Earth and Environmental
Science at the University of Pennsylvania, publicly announced he voted for Gore
in 2000 and said he would do so again. But Giegengack does not agree with Gore's
science views and states that global warming does not even qualify as one of the
top ten ENVIRONMENTAL problems facing the world, let alone one of the top
problems. "In terms of [global warming's] capacity to cause the human species
harm, I don't think it makes it into the top 10," Giegengack said in an
interview in the May/June 2007 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

Other
liberal environmental scientists and activists are now joining Giegengack.
Alexander Cockburn, a maverick journalist who leans left on most topics,
lambasted the alleged global-warming consensus on the political Web site
CounterPunch.org, arguing that there's no evidence yet that humans are causing
the rise in global temperature. After publicly speaking to reject man-made
warming fears, Cockburn wrote on February 22, 2008, "I have been treated as if I
have committed intellectual blasphemy." Cockburn harshly critiqued the political
left for embracing climate alarmism. "This turn to climate catastrophism is tied
into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left's optimistic vision of
altering the economic nature of things through a political program. The left has
bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can
persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the
emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and
environmental justice," Cockburn wrote. [See: A July 2007 and a March 2008
report detail how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation]

CNN - not exactly a bastion of conservatism - had yet another of its
meteorologists dissent from warming fears. Chad Myers, a meteorologist for 22
years and certified by the American Meteorological Society, spoke out against
anthropogenic climate claims on CNN in December. "You know, to think that we
could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant," Myers said during "Lou
Dobbs Tonight" on December 18, 2008. "Mother Nature is so big, the world is so
big, the oceans are so big - I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh
water or we're going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global
warming, for sure," Myers explained. Myers joins fellow CNN meteorologist Rob
Marciano, who compared Gore's film to `fiction' in 2007, and CNN anchor Lou
Dobbs who just said of global warming fear promotion on January 5, "It's almost
a religion without any question."

Denis G. Rancourt, professor of
physics and an environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa,
believes the global warming campaign does a disservice to the environmental
movement. Rancourt wrote on February 27, 2007, "Promoting the global warming
myth trains people to accept unverified, remote, and abstract dangers in the
place of true problems that they can discover for themselves by becoming
directly engaged in their workplace and by doing their own research and
observations." Rancourt wrote, "I argue that by far the most destructive force
on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and
their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a
red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who,
using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been
co-opted, or at best neutralized." "Global warming is strictly an imaginary
problem of the First World middle class," Rancourt added.

Perhaps the
biggest shock to the global warming debate was the recent conversion of renowned
French geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre from being a believer in dangerous
man-made warming fears to being a skeptic. Allegre, a former French Socialist
Party leader and a member of both the French and U.S. Academies of Science, was
one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, but he
now says the cause of climate change is "unknown." He ridiculed what he termed
the "prophets of doom of global warming" in a September 2006 article. Allegre
has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books, and received
numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical
Society of the United States. He now believes the global warming hysteria is
motivated by money. "The ecology of helpless protesting has become a very
lucrative business for some people!" he explained.

Left-wing Professor
David Noble of Canada's York University has joined the growing chorus of
disenchanted liberal activists. Noble now believes that the movement has "hyped
the global climate issue into an obsession." Noble wrote a May 8, 2007, essay
entitled "The Corporate Climate Coup" which details how global warming has
"hijacked" the environmental left and created a "corporate climate campaign,"
"divert[ing] attention from the radical challenges of the global justice
movement."

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental
campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV
series on wildlife, converted from believer to a skeptic about global warming.
Bellamy, a committed environmentalist, now says that shift cost him his career
at the BBC. Bellamy said in 2008, "My opinion is that there is absolutely no
proof that carbon dioxide has anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The
science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it's not even science any more,
it's anti-science. There's no proof, it's just projections and if you look at
the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry pick the ones that
support their beliefs."

Geologist Peter Sciaky echoes this growing
backlash of left-wing activists about global warming. Sciaky, who describes
himself as a "liberal and a leftist" wrote on June 9, 2007, "I do not know a
single geologist who believes that [global warming] is a man-made phenomenon."

Ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace founding member, has also
joined the ranks of the dissenters. "It is clear the contention that
human-induced CO2 emissions and rising CO2 levels in the global atmosphere are
the cause of the present global warming trend is a hypothesis that has not yet
been elevated to the level of a proven theory. Causation has not been
demonstrated in any conclusive way," Moore, the chief scientist for Greenspirit,
wrote in 2006.

Again, to repeat, it is becoming increasingly clear that
skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right
issue. It is a scientific question and the promoters of global warming fears now
realize they have significantly overreached.

American astronaut Dr. Jack Schmitt - the last
living man to walk on the moon - is the latest scientist to be added to the
roster of more than 70 skeptics who will confront the subject of global warming
at the second annual International Conference on Climate Change in New York City
March 8-10, 2009.

The conference expects to draw 1,000 attendees
including private-sector business people, state and federal legislators and
officials, policy analysts, media, and students.

Schmitt, who earned a
PhD from Harvard in geology, resigned in November from the Planetary Society, an
international non-profit organization devoted to inspiring "the people of Earth
to explore other worlds, understand our own, and seek life elsewhere." He is the
twelfth person to walk on the Moon; as of 2008, of the nine living moonwalkers,
he and his crewmate Eugene Cernan were the last two to walk there.

"As a
geologist, I love Earth observations," Schmitt wrote, "But, it is ridiculous to
tie this objective to a 'consensus' that humans are causing global warming when
human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue
otherwise. 'Consensus,' as many have said, merely represents the absence of
definitive science. You know as well as I, the 'global warming scare' is being
used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives,
incomes and decision making..."

Schmitt will be joined by more than 70
other economists, public officials, legal experts, and climate specialists
calling attention to new research that contradicts claims that Earth's moderate
warming during the 20th Century primarily was man-made and has reached crisis
proportions.

Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, producer
of the event along with more than 30 co-sponsors, explained, "At the first
conference last March, we proved that the skeptics in the debate over global
warming constitute the center or mainstream of the scientific community while
alarmists are on the fringe.

"Now in the past nine months, the science
has grown even more convincing that global warming is not a crisis. Also
suggesting this 'crisis' is over are opinion polls in the U.S. and around the
globe and political events, including the decisive defeat of 'cap-and-trade'
legislation in the U.S. Senate last spring. The crisis has been cancelled by
sound science and common-sense."

Contrary to popular belief, all useful information does not emanate
exclusively from the United States. Likewise, governments other than ours can,
on occasion, be as guilty as ours in suppressing useful information that is
inconvenient for governments, not to mention advocates of and special pleaders
for suspicious causes. Thus it was that while Americans were busy holidaying,
the Financial Times (FT) reported that the government of French President
Nicolas Sarkozy was busily burying an inconvenient study - analyzing options for
cleaner and more efficient mass-market cars -- commissioned by that very same
government.

The study was conducted by Jean Syrota, a former French
energy industry regulator. According to Paul Betts and Song Jung-a of FT, the
study "concludes that there is not much future in the much vaunted development
of all electric-powered cars. Instead, it suggests that the traditional
combustion engine powered by petrol, diesel, ethanol or new biofuels still
offers the most realistic prospect of developing cleaner vehicles. Carbon
emissions and fuel consumption could be cut by 30-40 per cent simply by
improving the performance and efficiency of traditional engines and limiting the
top speed to about 170km/hr [105 mph]....

"Overall, the Syrota report
says that adapting and improving conventional engines could enhance their
efficiency by an average of 50 per cent. It also argues that new-generation
hybrid cars combining conventional engines with electric propulsion could
provide an interesting future alternative. "By combining electric batteries with
conventional fuel-driven engines, cars could run on clean electricity for short
urban trips while switching over to fuel on motorways. This would resolve one of
the biggest problems facing all electric cars - the need to install costly
battery recharging infrastructures. The report warns that the overall cost of an
all-electric car remains unviable at around double that of a conventional
vehicle."

A single, buried French report cannot and should not curtail
the development of electric cars. But it should be a cautionary note to all
governments (California among them) rushing to embrace, with taxpayer money, the
automobile panacea that could in reality never amount to more than a niche
product with negligible impact on energy or transportation needs and
considerable impact on consumer and taxpayer cost.

Not a week after FT
reported on the buried French study, other news reports indicated that 14 U.S.
companies had formed a coalition to seek $1 billion in U.S. government funding
to develop batteries for electric cars. (You may have read that all free-market
principles having now being discredited, the government will be responsible for
all venture capital.) That's your money, as the ad slogan says. Call and let us
know how far it gets your electric car across Route 66.

Some years ago, walking a
stretch of the Pennine Way, I received the first of many lessons in the politics
of the great outdoors. High on the Northumberland moors, not having seen a soul
all morning, we met a countryside ranger. As we greeted each other, he said,
with a kind of practised, jovial menace: "Don't drop any litter now, will you."
In an instant he ruined our day. His words provoked in our mild-mannered souls a
teeth-gnashing rage. Spoken to like rebellious fourth-formers, we had a burning
desire to behave like them: to shred our crisp packets and scatter them to the
winds, to drop our drinks bottle and leave a trail of silver wrapper; purely to
thwart this insensitive jobsworth.

We didn't, of course, but a sense of
his deep discourtesy remained. Subsequently I have met others like him, and have
come to realise that our ranger was not some unfortunate one-off, but a type:
the voice of a particular constituency in green places. Welcome to the world of
Woolly-hat Man; the elitist of open spaces. Woolly-hat Man has spiritual
ownership, and no one else. Even in the most solitary parts of these crowded
islands, he will not trust you to leave only footprints. And, like the worst
kind of opera snob, Woolly-hat Man can barely tolerate the people whom he knows
to be incapable of appreciating the show properly.

It all came back to me
this week, when the argument against charity challenges reared its head. The
authorities that oversee Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain, declared that
charity climbs were "destroying" the landscape. Hundreds of thousands of people
now climb Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon every year, with visitor figures
for 2008 among the highest yet, but land managers singled out for special
criticism the 60,000 or so annually who attempt the Three Peaks Challenge,
climbing all three mountains within 24 hours.

This challenge is a
nebulous, unorganised thing. People undertake it in the same individualistic way
that they trek from Lands End to John o' Groats. And because participants race
on public roads through Scotland, England and Wales to beat the clock, the
challenge has a fairly subterranean culture. Which, of course, only adds to its
appeal. Now in all probability, Three Peakers are slightly mad. But that is not
the issue. What is at stake is their right to be mad. Most do it to raise money
for good causes, some do it for personal satisfaction and everyone does it
because they are entitled to do it: they use public roads and climb hills that
belong to the nation.

But in the eyes of at least one guardian of Ben
Nevis, the groups of fit young men who take on the challenge "can turn the
mountain into Billy Smart's circus". As opposed to what? Glyndebourne? The
Highland Council is to hold talks with the Institute of Fundraising this month
to draw up a new code of conduct that will strike a compromise, it is said,
between charity and conservation. The intention, plainly, is to end what are
called "unsustainable" group challenges on all three of Britain's highest peaks.
Two powerful forces - snobbery and an obsession with regulation - are inevitably
leading to a situation where the authorities will pick and choose who can climb
the mountains; and when.

Now I don't run up mountains for a hobby, but I
would always, in that good old libertarian sense, defend the rights of others to
do so. These runners should be as free to do what they do as others are to take
part in the London Marathon: unless, of course, we intend to start charging
joggers for eroding the pavements, or taxing cyclists who mount their bikes at
Land's End. The argument is essentially the same.

The truth is that the
very same outdoor aristocracy that preaches diversity and equal access for all,
that produces a countryside safety guide and probably translates the damn thing
into Urdu and Arabic; that draws up health strategies to resist obesity - these
people secretly detest the end results. Deep down, they hate the charity
challenges, the mountain bikers, the long-distance footpath followers - the
unstoppable invasion of their green space.

For them, it is dumbing-down:
not just the arrival of the great unwashed in hopeless trainers, but the
threatening hordes of fit Bear Gryllses, who can handle the outdoors but just
aren't respectful enough.

Double standards rule, I'm afraid. The
woolly-hat brigade, free spirits to a man, would not tolerate being regulated
themselves. Tell them that they could not climb a mountain when they wanted to,
or must pay an entry fee, and they would revolt. But they are perfectly happy to
stop others.

It is one of the great ironies of the present elitism that
the original outdoor movement had working-class roots, founded largely by men
desperate to escape from the toil of heavy industry at the weekends. Access to
green spaces has therefore always been a great socialist cause; the kernel of
the great class war over land ownership. Funny, isn't it, how poachers always
turn gamekeepers in the end?

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Germany having 'one of the coldest winters in
100 years'

The cold has so far cost four people their lives and
caused even the Muritzsee [a large lake] to freeze up.

One of the
coldest winters in 100 years has cost Germany more lives. At minus 16 degrees a
homeless man in Rhineland-Palatinate froze to death. Police said yersterday that
the 58-year-old had for two years lived with a 43-year-old in a tent.

On
Friday morning, a 53-year old Berliner was fished out dead from a hole in the
ice in the Elde in Grabow (District Ludwigslust). According to the police at
directorate Schwerin, the man's car was found with the key still in the ignition
on the bridge of the federal 5th

In Nidda a man who lived in a nursing
home became a victim of the cold, according to the police in Friedberg. The
corpse of a man who on Sunday ran away from home, was found on Monday. Only now
it has been established that he froze to death. On Monday in Weimar a demented
77 - year-old who had got lost froze to death.....

According to the
German Weather Service (DWD), this is one of the coldest winters of the past 100
years. It is quite rare that such low temperatures as in the past days were
recorded, the DWD meteorologist Thomas Schmidt said yesterday. The weather
service Meteomedia reported yesterday a temperature of minus 34.6 degrees at the
Funtensee in the Bavarian Alps. It was there in Christmas 2001, that the lowest
temperature so far in Germany was recorded -- at minus 45.9 degrees Celsius, .

For the first time in years the Mueritz lake in Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania -- with 11,700 hectares of Germany's largest lake scenery -- was again
completely covered with ice. In northern Germany ice increasingly hampered
inland ship movements: The Elbe was from Friday morning closed to shipping above
Hamburg because of a thick blanket of ice.

Calling Paul Ehrlich: "Half
the planet could be hit by food crisis by 2100"

These ignoramuses
are smarter than Ehrlich in one respect: They put their prophecy way in the
future

According to researchers, there is a 90 percent probability
that by 2100 the minimum temperatures in the tropics and sub-tropical regions
will be higher than the maximums so far recorded in those areas. The affect
[effect?] on crop-growing in those regions would be dire, according to the
projections based on direct observations and data culled from 23 computer models
on the planet's evolving climate patterns.

"The stresses on global food
production from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn't take
into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures," said David
Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. "We are
taking the worst of what we've seen historically and saying that in the future
it is going to be a lot worse unless there is some kind of adaptation," added
Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and
the Environment.

In the tropics, the warmest temperatures will cut maize
and rice harvests by 20 to 40 percent, the researchers said. [Rubbish! Rice
crops best in high temperatures. Indonesia is close to the equator and they
often get 3 rice crops a year there] The hotter weather will also reduce the
moisture in the soil, cutting yields even further. [Really! Higher
temperatures would cause more ocean evaporation and hence heavier
rainfall!]

Some three billion people, or half the world's population,
currently live in tropical and sub-tropical regions, and their number is set to
double by the end of the century. These regions stretch from northern India,
southern China to much of Australia and all of Africa, and also extend from the
southern United States to northern Argentina and southern Brazil.

Liam Dutton, the weatherman for the BBC, recently
wrote on the BBC site:

Having worked at the BBC weather centre for about six years, I'm
finding it hard to remember the last time I talked about cold weather
constantly for such a long period of time - and that's saying something, as
I'm a bit of a winter weather fan.

The start of the meteorological
winter is 1 December and last month proved to be the coldest December in more
than 30 years, with the average temperature at 1.7C (35F), compared with the
long-term average of 4.7C (40F) for the first part of the
month.

Dutton says the he is frequently asked if this unusually
cold winter is a record breaker. He says it isn't: "The current UK lowest
temperature record stands at -27.2C (-17F) at Braemar in Scotland, which was
last reached in December 1995, and before that in 1982."

So the coldest
winter on record in the UK is 1995 and before that 1982. The London Telegraph
reports that even southern England, which is used to mild winters were shocked
this year. "Dog walkers and boat owners were startled to discover that the
waters around the exclusive Sandbanks peninsula which stretches out into the
harbour at Pool, Dorset, were covered in ice." They report that a half mile
section of the coast "reaching out about 20 yards to sea was frozen". The local
marina manager says that in his 20 years of managing the marina "I cannot
remember this ever happening before."

The Royal Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has urged people to bring all pets indoors and
report that smaller pets outside have frozen to death. The water fountains in
Trafalagar Square have frozen and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
says that the freezing temperatures are putting wild birds at risk as it is
becoming difficult for them to find food.

In Milan, Italy a snowstorm
brought the city to a halt. Warsaw, and Berlin, Germany, both saw minus 20
degrees Celsisus days. Police in Poland saw that this winter 76 people have died
from the cold. In France, snow has cancelled rail service between Pairs and
Marseille. Demand for energy is so high that the authorities are warning of
black outs if people don't cut their heating needs. An icebreaker was brought
into Rotterdam harbor to break up the ice that had closed the harbor

The
deaths are a sad reminder that cold weather, not warm weather, is the main
killer of people, especially the elderly. Last year England had 25,300 elderly
die due to cold weather, that was up on the previous year when 23,740 died from
the cold. A spokesman for the National Pensioners Conventions says: "Since 1997,
we have lost over 260,000 pensioners during the winter months because of
cold-related illnesses..."

I remember in 2003 that a particularly unusual
heat wave hit France while many physicians were on their annual holiday. That
summer France saw 14,802 people die from the heat. That got reported in the US.
Now we read that cold has killed over a quarter of a million elderly people in
just the UK alone in the last decade. The French heat wave from 2003 has not yet
been repeated so those 14,802 deaths were in one year only. The UK sees that
number of deaths EVERY year from cold plus around another 10,000 more. Did you
see that reported in the US media? This is a far more tragic set of statistics
but one the media in the US doesn't find "sexy". It doesn't have that "global
warming" angle to it that the media loves so much.

A google news search
on "coldest winter England" turns up quite a few stories from the UK regarding
the bitter weather there this year but the US media barely appears in the
listing. The rather unusual story about a section of sea water freezing got no
hits from the US media in google news, though the UK media reported on it. I
couldn't find a mention of at the New York Times while the BBC couldn't ignore
it.

I'm not going to say that this weather proves global cooling -- even
if I'm becoming more and more convinced that a global cooling is more likely
than a global warming, at least for the rest of my lifetime. Weather extremes
like this can't prove global cooling. Of course, neither do weather extremes in
the other direction prove global warming. And it would be silly if a "skeptic"
on the warming issue were to argue that this ultra-cold winter is proof of
cooling. I am sure that many warming activists will go to great lengths to
remind us not to be fooled by singular weather events like this
one.

Well, except when those singular events appear to bolster their
case. The on-line envrionmental publication Grist was very quick to note that
extra heavy wild fires in California were a result of global warming -- even if
experts in forest fires said that was poppycock. Grist justified their hysteria
saying: "You've got to talk when people are paying attention" and "You've got to
drive home the point while people actually care about wildfires (same true for
hurricanes, droughts, etc.)." They said that jumping in during such disasters
would be useful because "the media will lap it up."

When Hurricane
Katrina hit the Green Left was all over the media with claims about how global
warming was responsible. Not only that but more frequent and powerful storms
would be battering the US as a result of this warming. Katrina hit in 2005. That
year 15 hurricanes hit. The 2006 hurricane season was light, with just 5. The
2007 hurrican season ended with 6, 2008 was slightly more active with
8.

Torandos are a nasty piece of weather. And sometimes they hit in
places where they normally aren't found. Since 1950 there have six recorded in
New York City, about one every decade. The Washington Post ran an article on
August 9, 2007 about the small tornado that had hit New York City the prior day.
The Post gave it the scare headline: "Did Global Warming Cause NYC Tornado?"
(The link for this story has been removed from the Post site and the story
appears to have vanished from their archives as well. But all traces of the
story have not vanished. If you go to this warming scare story you on the Post
site you will see they forgot to delete a link to the story. Here is a screen
capture of the "more stories" section listing the story. But if you try to click
on the link it will take you no where.

In 2007 England suffered from some
summer flooding that was unusually severe. The Independent reported: "It's
official, the heavier rainfall in Britain is... being generated by man-made
global warming." One atypical weather event and they hopped on the warming
angle. The current cold spell, however, is reported without any mention of the
warming worry. Later studies showed that warming had nothing to do with the
floods. But all the major media outlet had already reported
otherwise.

Weather extremes can be very nasty things. And the media can
report them or ignore them. From what I've seen their tendency is to report
endlessly any such extremes that substantiate the warming agenda that
politicians and the UN are pushing. Weather extremes that would undermine such
reports tend to get ignored or downplayed. I'm not even saying that the press is
doing this intentionally. I suspect that they know what they know and
information that confirms what they know is deemed important by them.
Information, which seems to contradict or undermine what they know is
selectively ignored or downplayed because "they know" it isn't, or can't be,
important.

If you are going out anytime over the next few
months, may I suggest that you wear a hat? You might even buy earmuffs. We are
experiencing yet another cold winter. Al Gore may believe in global warming, but
I suggest that he have a word with his fellow environmental catastrophists at
the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Predictions. Since the end of 1998 global
warming has ceased. In fact, it is getting colder out there. Two thousand eight
was possibly the coldest year of this young century. Over the last two years
temperatures have dropped by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius -- brrrr.

The
reason I mention Al's co-religionists at the Hadley Centre is that they have
come to realize that computer projections of global warming have been wrong.
Carbon dioxide levels have indeed increased but not temperatures. So bundle up,
Al. Last year, in many parts of the world, snowfalls reached levels not seen in
decades. The Associated Press recently shrieked that global warming "is a
ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid," but the facts
are otherwise. The computer models that have predicted global warming have
failed just as the computer models that predicted very few financial losses for
the insurance industry from credit default swaps (CDSs) failed.

Christopher Booker, writing in London's Daily Telegraph, observes that
"2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved." I am not sure I would
go that far, but I do believe that the so-called consensus that the
catastrophists claim exists among scientists has frayed, and it may be years
before we know if global warming is long-range or what causes it. It may be
caused by humans, but it may also be caused by natural activity on the sun.

From the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization has come a very
interesting book of essays that displays the diverse views of some very serious
scientific minds. One contributor, Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric
sciences at MIT, raises the question: "Is the Global Warming Alarm Founded on
Fact?" He acknowledges that over the decades there has been some global warming
but argues that the predictions of catastrophe are greatly exaggerated. "Actual
observations suggest that the sensitivity of the real climate is much less than
that found in computer models whose sensitivity depends on processes that are
clearly misrepresented."

Then there is Freeman Dyson, who in the June
12, 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books writes very calmly about global
warming. He assures us that "genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" are
just around the corner, likely to be developed in twenty years, certain to be
developed in fifty years. What is so promising about genetically engineered
carbon-eating trees? Writes Dyson: "Carbon-eating trees could convert most of
the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form
and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and
other useful chemicals."

So relax. Our future is in the trees --
genetically engineered carbon eating trees. Frigid winters are on the return. Al
Gore's next new thing will be the common cold. It is rather amazing to think of
how he and the catastrophists whipped up hysteria worldwide. One wonders what
their next fear will be, carnivorous trees?

Book Review of "Red Hot
Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You
Misinformed". By Christopher C. Horner

Those of us who refuse to
accept calls from proponents of global warming for drastic restrictions on
production often confront objections like this:

You skeptics, blinded by fanatical devotion to the free market,
ignore evidence. True enough, you can trot out a few scientists who agree with
you. But the overwhelming majority of climate scientists view man-made global
warming as a great threat to the world. The course of inaction you urge on us
threatens the earth with disaster.

Christopher Horner's
excellent book provides a convincing response to this all-too-frequent
complaint. But how can it do so? Will not an "anti-global-warming" book of
necessity consist of an account of scientists who dissent from the consensus? If
so, will it not fall victim to the difficulty raised in our imagined objection?
The book will pick a few favored experts to back up a preconceived political
agenda. Horner strikes at the root of this objection: it rests on a false
premise. Contrary to what our objection assumes, there is in fact no consensus
of scientists behind global-warming alarmism:

Professor Dennis Bray of Germany and Hans von Storch polled
climate scientists to rate the statement, "To what extent do you agree or
disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?" .
They received responses from 530 climate scientists in 27 countries, of whom
44 percent were either neutral or disagreed with the statement. Science
magazine helpfully refused to publish the findings, by the way. (p.
157)

But do not the most prestigious bodies of scientists, such
as the National Academy of Science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, claim that man-made global warming is indeed a danger? Horner shows that
matters are not what they appear. Environmentalists insinuated their way into
the National Academy through "a special Temporary Nominating Committee for the
Global Environment, bypassing normal election procedures" (p. 91). Once
ensconced, these partisan figures used their position to elect more of their ilk
and to block skeptics. The environmentalist members include Paul Ehrlich, who
predicted in The Population Bomb (1968) that by the 1970s and '80s hundreds of
millions of people would die from starvation. His manifest failure as a
prognosticator has not deterred him from touting new and improved ways to
cripple capitalism.

Appeal to the Intergovernmental Panel (IPCC) is
likewise dubious. Far from expressing a consensus of the world's leading climate
experts, the reports of IPCC alter the opinions of the contributors to reflect
climate alarmism. Horner quotes to great effect several protests by IPCC experts
over the distortion of their views.

Dr. Frederick Seitz . revealed that although the IPCC report
carries heft due to having been the topic of review and discussion by many
scientists, "the report is not what it appears to be - it is not the version
that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page."
(p. 300)

Activists in charge of the report's summary exaggerated
what the scientists had said to promote the global-warming agenda.

The
drive against dissenters from global warming extends much further. Patrick
Michaels, a leading critic, reports that an editor told him skeptical papers
must face much stricter scrutiny to win acceptance. The "newly elected
Democratic Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, . soon after taking office ratcheted
up the effort to get Michaels removed" from his post of state climatologist (p.
113). In one case, when a skeptical paper evaded the landmines and secured
publication, the global-warming enthusiasts demanded that an immediate rebuttal
appear.

It gets much worse. Bjorn Lomborg affirms global warming, but he
angered the alarmists because he thinks programs to reduce carbon emissions
should not have a high priority. When he expressed this view in The Skeptical
Environmentalist, the alarmists launched against him a campaign of contumely. A
Danish Star Chamber court of inquiry, the Danish Committees on Scientific
Dishonesty, found him guilty of misrepresentation, even though it lacked
evidence on which to base this charge. Instead, it took over and adopted as its
own a bill of previously published charges.

The Committees ruled in January 2003, stating that "Objectively
speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall
within the concept of scientific dishonesty." This opinion, such as it was,
offered as evidence not analysis, but a list of those who had criticized
Lomborg. (p. 122, emphasis and footnote number removed)

After
more inquiry, the Danish government quashed the proceedings, and Lomborg emerged
vindicated.

Some globalists go even further. Greenpeace has called Horner
a "climate criminal"; and an environmentalist group even rummaged through his
trash, apparently hoping to find evidence of an antiglobalist conspiracy.
Environmentalist stalwarts have urged that skeptics be imprisoned: by
endeavoring to undermine our battle against the global-warming menace, are not
skeptics guilty of criminal conduct? In Australia, global-warming advocates want
to strip deniers of their citizenship.

Why do the proponents of global
warming try to stamp out dissent? As Horner makes clear, billions of dollars are
at stake.

The University of California system, for example, is preparing to
spend $500 million [in taxpayer dollars] to create a think tank to analyze
global warming and the Public Utilities Commission has adopted a decision
which will spend $600 million more for a separate think tank to study the
issue. (p. 223)

Research grants to "prove" global warming can
readily be obtained. Nor is the gravy train confined to scientists; journalists,
environmentalist organizations, and television and movie producers benefit from
the campaign to save the earth. Al Gore, among other politicians, has used
global-warming propaganda to enhance his fame and fortune. As Horner shows in a
chapter that makes painful reading, "educational" materials to enlist children
into the crusade provide yet another source of profit. If the global-warming
hypothesis were overthrown, all of this money would be at risk; hence the
imperative necessity to silence the critics.

But here I must face an
objection. Even if heavy funding supports global-warming research, this does not
suffice to show that the results of this work lack validity. Even if someone is
"in it for the money," his results may be right. Must not motives and results be
kept strictly separate? Indeed so; but I have not argued that heavy financial
backing undermines the conclusions of this sort of research. Rather, the
financial interests explain why globalists suppress dissent. That said, the
backing behind global-warming research should induce those of us who are not
experts to hesitate before accepting in full the claims of the alarmists. The
claim is not the fallacious "because you are an interested party, your results
cannot stand"; it is the entirely defensible "because you an interested party, I
will exercise caution before I accept what you say." Richard Posner, himself an
alarmist, recognizes the point:

Fair enough; it would be a mistake to suppose scientists to be
completely disinterested, and when the science is inexact or unsettled the
normal self-interested motivations that scientists share with the rest of us
have elbow room for influencing scientific opinion. To this it can be added
that the climatic and other environmental effects of burning fossil fuels are
red flags to the Greens. (Richard A. Posner, Catastrophe: Risk and Response
(Oxford, 2004), p. 54)

But, as Posner goes on to note, does not
this point also tell against the skeptics? Businesses have supported some of
their research. This should certainly be acknowledged. As Horner notes, though,
the notion that global-warming skeptics are tools of oil companies and other big
businesses has little to be said for it. Quite the contrary, many businesses
avidly support global-warming alarmism. If legislation imposes restrictions on
oil and coal, e.g., alternative energy sources stand to profit.

But does
not the objection I posed at the outset now recur in modified form? Even if no
scientific consensus endorses global warming, what justifies us in inclining to
the skeptical position? Are we not choosing our experts to harmonize with our
political opinions? Here we cannot escape. We must evaluate the evidence as best
we can and this does entail choosing which experts to believe. It does not
follow, though, that we must adopt agreement with a political position as our
criterion for choice.

Horner offers a number of facts that lend strong
backing to those who question the global-warming dogma. (The main focus of the
book, though, lies not in scientific theory but in a depiction of the techniques
and tactics of Horner's opponents.[1]) For one thing, a number of the
thermometers used to measure global warming have been placed in situations
likely to produce an upward bias, e.g., next to incinerators or in cities rather
than less warm rural locations.

Horner does not deny that some increase
in temperature has occurred since the panic about global cooling in the '70s.
But the increase by no means pushes the earth's temperature higher than ever in
recorded history, let alone prehistoric times. Temperatures in the Medieval
Warming Period ranged at least as high as those now current. Further, the
projected increase in temperature owing to human emissions of carbon dioxide,
the basis for all the panic, amounts to very little. If temperature does
increase somewhat, this may turn out to have largely good effects, such as
greater growth in vegetation.

Subsequent research [to Michael Mann's discredited "hockey-stick
graph"] has ratified the old, outdated thinking drawn from agricultural
records, diaries, cultural artifacts, and the like that the Medieval Warming
was warmer than today and the [following] Little Ice Age cooler, globally and
not regionally. (pp. 108-9)

But what of claims that temperature
increase may melt the polar icecaps, with dire consequences? Horner notes that
the area near the North Pole has been warmer in the past than it is now;
further, Antarctica, much larger than the Arctic Circle, now is colder than
earlier in the 20th century. Alarms about flooding rest on highly disputable
computer models.

Even if the skeptics have a good case, why need we adopt
it? I do not mean that we should judge in favor of the alarmists and set to one
side the arguments of their critics. Rather, why need we take sides in a
scientific controversy, any more than, say, we need to adopt a particular
interpretation of quantum mechanics?

Unfortunately, we cannot remain
neutral while the experts battle. The global-warming advocates support drastic
measures that would seriously affect production. Some of them go further and
call for curbs on human population. In this connection, it is more than a little
disturbing that John Holdren, chosen by Barack Obama as his science advisor
since the publication of Horner's book, is a close associate of Paul Ehrlich.
Holdren was among those elected to the National Academy of Science "from the
temporary nominating group" earlier mentioned (p. 93). To decline to take a
stand is to surrender to environmentalist extremists.

A nagging doubt
remains. What if, however unlikely, the alarmists turn out to be right? Horner
deploys in this connection what Herbert Hoover would have called a "powerful
statistic": there is little that we can do to lower world temperatures. If all
nations fully adhered to the guidelines of the Kyoto Protocol, this would have
but a minute effect.

As Pat Michaels' World Climate blog summed it up: ".the amount of
future global warming that would be 'saved' would amount to about 0.07øC by
the year 2050 and 0.15øC by 2100." That amount of warming delayed for a few
years at such tremendous cost is actually too small for scientists to
distinguish from the "noise" of inter-annual temperature variability. (p.
249)

Measures to curb global warming cannot succeed, but they
can do much harm. It is Horner's great merit to have called our attention to a
real danger - not global warming, but the measures that global-warming alarmists
wish to inflict on us.

Friday, January 09, 2009

FORECAST FOR 2009

An email from
S. Fred Singer [mailto:singer@sepp.org]

So here we have them:
Obama's three scientistsªSteve Chu, John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco. All with
sterling credentials - a Nobel laureate in physics, a recent president of the
AAAS, a recent head of the International Council of Scientific Unions - but with
minimal knowledge of climate science, except what they may have gleaned from
reading the IPCC summary. Yet all three seem supremely confident that they will
drastically change US climate policy. Well, let me be the first with the bad
(for them) news: Within a year or so, they are going to be an awfully frustrated
bunch.

My fearless forecast for 2009: Big amount of activity by Congress,
with lots of 'Cap&Trade' bills to limit CO2 emissions. Waxman, Markey, and
Pelosi in the House; Boxer, Lieberman, Bingeman, and maybe even McCain in the
Senate. It will take off, but it won't fly: There is the prohibitive cost of any
real C&T, raising energy prices and killing jobs -- while the economy is in
the dumps. There is the horrible example of the European emission-trading
brouhaha, falling apart even as we go to press. And after ten years, the climate
is still refusing to warm. I am not even considering the threat of a filibuster
in the Senateªwith Democrats from 'fly-over' states joining Republican opponents
of C&T.

I think that Obama is much too smart to devote political
capital to doomed climate legislation. He has more important priorities, and
must also be thinking of 2010 and, of course, the 2012 elections. Being a
'one-term' president just doesn't look good. He will certainly go through the
motions and come up with great rhetoric. He'll trot out his science team - but
to no avail. Climate science isn't going to figure prominently in the
Congressional debates - alas; it's all about economics and politics.

Now
for the real action: Once legislation stalls, Carol Browner, the supreme
ideologue and strategist, will go the regulatory route. EPA will try to treat
CO2 as a 'criteria pollutant' under the terms of the Clean Air Act. But there
will be litigation. EPA must demonstrate 'endangerment' and make a persuasive
case that CO2 is a threat to 'public health and welfare.' Perhaps even show that
there is a critical level of CO2 and demonstrate convincingly - in a
court-of-law -- that its regulatory program will succeed in keeping CO2 from
reaching that level. EPA will be required to respond to all the scientific
evidence now in its docket that says CO2 is not a threat - including the NIPCC
report. Here is where climate science will finally become all-important - but
Obama's science team will be of no help once cross-examination
starts.

How much better if the three team members lay off climate and
devote their efforts and expertise to genuine problems: Holdren can handle
nuclear proliferation and the rising threat of nuclear terrorism; Lubchenco can
try to stem the over-exploitation of ocean resources, and look after fisheries
and whales; Chu should be thinking about the inevitable transition from fossil
fuels to various forms of nuclear energy and foster research that assures
adequate and low-cost supplies of fissionable fuel for the more efficient and
safer reactors of the future.

While this may be best use of their
considerable collective talents, they will probably be pressed into service to
back up Browner on her dubious climate science -- where they have negligible
expertise.

So cold the sea around Britain
freezes

All due to global warming, of course. Global warming is a
magic wand for socialists

It is an event as rare as it is spectacular
- but yesterday, after a week of sub-zero conditions, the sea around Britain
began to freeze. Instead of waves gently lapping the shore, walkers in
Sandbanks, Dorset, found swathes of ice stretching up to 20m along the shore. It
is highly unusual for Britain's coastline to freeze, but the combination of a
sustained cold snap and the protected location of the Dorset peninsula made it
possible. At Padstow, in Cornwall, in another sheltered harbour, seagulls
skimmed across a layer of ice. And in South Wales, boats were frozen in their
moorings on the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal in Pontypool. Because of its salt
content, sea water freezes solid at about minus 2C.

Kevin Horsburgh, a
scientist at Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool, said: "What
generally happens is when the surface freezes, it gets heavier and sinks. The
heat in the water needs to be extracted in order for the surface to stay frozen.
In order for that to happen you need a long and sustained period of sub-zero
temperatures." Mr Horsburgh added that sheltered peninsulas and harbours were
more likely to freeze than open coastline. "A harbour has quite a low level of
salt content because it has fresh water from rivers running into it," he said.
"The saltier the water, the less chance of it freezing."

The cold snap
showed no signs of abating yesterday. On Tuesday night temperatures plummeted as
low as minus 12C in Benson, Oxfordshire. At Bournemouth Airport it was minus
11C, the coldest January night since 1963. Meanwhile in Farnborough, Hampshire,
where the thermometer also recorded minus 11C, it was the coldest January night on record since 1926.

There
were signs yesterday that the freezing conditions are affecting Britain badly,
with the Local Government Association warning that tens of thousands of
pensioners could die as a result of the prolonged cold snap. It is feared the
number of deaths caused by the winter chill could exceed last year's figure of
25,000.

Efforts to sell climate policy based on ever
more scary scenarios of apocalypse cannot be sustained and are likely to work in
exactly the opposite manner than desired. A good example of why this is so can
be found in a recent paper (hat tip Dad [Pielke Sr]) that suggests that the rate
of sea level rise from 2003-2008 (2.5 mm/year) is 20% lower than that presented
by the IPCC for 1993-2003 (3.1 mm/year). Whether this is "consistent with"
longer-term predictions is different that whether it is "consistent with" a
political strategy based on scaring people. It seems pretty obvious that systems
that exhibit a large amount of variability or are simply poorly understood on
relatively short time scales are not very useful props in efforts to show the
world moving inexorably towards doom.

This reminds me of the CCSP's Unified Synthesis Product [USP]. It
trumpeted as a "key finding" (no. 2), which it claimed was novel, thusly: "Many
climatic changes are occurring faster than projected even a few years ago."

In my comments, I noted that: "this is based on cherry picking of
information. While many climate changes may be occurring faster than projected,
many others are not. For example, global temperature has not warmed
significantly over the past dozen years or so (see e.g., here), the
oceans may not have warmed as much as expected (e.g., Lyman et al. 2006; Willis
et al. 2007, 2008), and there are recent papers that suggest sea level may not
be rising as rapidly as suggested by the IPCC's latest report (Berge Nguyen et
al. 2008; Unnnikrishnan and Shankar 2007; Kolker and Hameed 2007; Woppelmann et
al. 2007; see also here, which
suggest slowing of sea level rise). In any case, regardless of whether recent
data show ups or downs, it's not clear that these short term blips will become
long term trends. Accordingly, Finding 2 should be jettisoned, or it should be
modified to: (a) acknowledge that many other climatic changes may not be
occurring as rapidly as projected, and examples provided above should be
included, and (b) note that it is downright unscientific, if not risky, to base
long term policy on short term data, particularly when it comes to climate
change, itself a long term phenomenon."

I also noted with respect to
another "key finding" that: "There is a tendency in [the USP] to treat recent
trends as harbingers of future long term trends. For example, there is the
statement (previously noted) that some changes are happening faster than
anticipated. Similarly, Key Finding 4 states that 'Atlantic hurricane intensity
has increased in recent decades...' But data going back to 1970 or so are too
short to be used to make definitive statements about whether changes in
intensity are due to climatic trends, short term natural variability,
improvement in detection technologies with enhanced spatial and temporal
resolution, or a combination of all these factors. In the long term context,
it's not clear whether these changes, if any, are outside the bounds of natural
variability. [I note that one doesn't normally see analysis that rules this out
as a hypothesis, which I believe is a major shortcoming in climate change
science.]

My comment, of course, cuts both ways. Protagonists/observers
on both sides of the climate change debate should be fully aware of the data and
cognisant of short term variations, but not mistake them for long term trends.
To do so, means we are assuming we know more than we actually do.

Governments across Europe declared
states of emergency and ordered factories to close as Russia cut all gas
supplies through Ukraine yesterday in their worsening dispute over unpaid bills.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, accused the two
countries of taking the EU's energy supply "hostage" amid a cold snap across the
Continent, and urged them to reopen the pipelines immediately. Schools and
factories were closed and trees were felled to keep home fires burning after
Russia turned off the gas taps to more than a dozen countries. It was a clear
demonstration of the dependence of the Continent on Russian gas supplies.

Despite temperatures as low as minus 27C and the threat of heating cuts
to millions of households, Moscow said that it had no choice but to cease
supplies because Ukraine, the country through which 80 per cent of Russian gas
bound for Europe flows, had closed its pipelines. The claim was denied by Kiev.

Countries tapped into their reserves and urged the use of alternative
fuels but at least 15,000 households in Bulgaria - which gets 92 per cent of its
gas via the Ukrainian pipelines - found their heating cut off overnight.
Slovakia's Government followed Bulgaria by announcing that it may have to
restart a mothballed Soviet-era nuclear power plant.

The Balkan states,
which rely almost completely on Russian gas and have failed to develop modern
infra-structures or alternative energy sources, have been the hardest hit at the
time of the Orthodox Christmas. In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
there were bitter memories of the Bosnian conflict from 1992-95, when the
population cut down trees to try to stay warm or bought coal on the black
market. Sven Alkalay, the Bosnian Foreign Minister, said: "Four million of our
citizens are in danger." Almir Becarevic, the manager of the state gas company,
said: "If this lasts it could turn into a humanitarian disaster. We pray that
someone can find a solution."

To try to restart supplies, the EU
proposed yesterday that it should send independent monitors to watch the dials
on the pipes at Ukraine's borders. Russia claims that Ukraine is taking gas it
has not paid for from the pipelines, reducing the onward supply to Europe. It
has responded by cutting supplies in the pipeline by the amount it says Ukraine
is stealing. By checking how much gas is entering Ukraine from Russia and then
measuring how much emerges at its western borders with Europe, the EU hopes to
establish who is to blame for the shortages.

Mr Barroso said that he had
agreement in principle for the process from Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime
Minister, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Yuliya Tymoshenko, who will send
officials to Brussels today to thrash out the details. Mr Barroso spoke to both
leaders yesterday, but he said they continued to blame each other. "Prime
Minister Putin told me that Russia is providing the gas destined for the EU,
Prime Minister Tymoshenko told me that they have created no problems with
transit through Ukraine," an exasperated Mr Barroso said. "The conclusion is
clear: if both Russia and Ukraine behave as they say they are behaving, there
should be no problem."

He added: "If Ukraine is trying to be closer to
the European Union, it should not create problems when it comes to the supply of
gas to the EU." Yet 12 countries received no Russian gas at all yesterday:
Austria, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece,
Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. France, Italy, Germany and
Poland reported that their supplies from Russia were markedly down.

The
International Energy Agency, which is the energy-monitoring and policy arm of
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that the
situation was "completely unacceptable, given that European customers are not a
party in this dispute. "Despite the reassuring statements late December by both
parties that supply to Europe would not be interrupted, supplies have now come
to a complete halt," it said. "The interruption is creating hardship during the
coldest weather Europe has faced within a number of years."

The US
showed who it blamed for the crisis when Stephen Hadley, the National Security
Adviser, warned Moscow that using its energy exports to threaten its neighbours
would undermine its international standing.

Amid mounting fears of
shortages in Germany and France, Britain has begun to export emergency supplies
of gas to Europe. The flow in the pipeline connecting Britain to Belgium and
beyond, which normally imports gas to Britain, was reversed late yesterday after
prices on the Continent rose. Analysts said that the weak pound was encouraging
European suppliers to use Britain as a cheap transit route for Norwegian
gas

AFTER
THEIR WAR ON NUCLEAR AND COAL ENERGY, GREEN CAMPAIGNERS TARGET NATURAL
GAS

Earlier this week I posted a comment on the implications for
environmental policy stemming from the dispute between Russia and Ukraine that
has halted gas deliveries to Europe. I said the dispute - which worsened
Wednesday - would give policymakers and environmental campaigners more
ammunition to speed up the transformation away from fossil fuels of any kind,
including cleaner burning ones like natural gas. Sure enough, on Wednesday, the
prominent environmental group WWF issued a statement from its European Policy
Office that retracted much of its previous support for natural gas as a fuel of
choice for industrial countries making a transition to a low-carbon economy.

"So far, comparably clean natural gas has been broadly supported by WWF
as a logical mid-term alternative to high-polluting coal in the power sector and
oil in the heating sector," the statement said. But "the Russian gas policy is
highly risky as it fully undermines the public confidence in this low-carbon
fossil fuel" and that made it "time to reconsider the role for natural gas as a
bridging fuel to sustainable energy." WWF said it now wanted new laws in place
mandating energy efficiency in buildings and far more promotion of renewable
energy for the electricity sector.

Arianna Vitali, a policy officer for
WWF in Brussels, said that it would be possible through legislation on buildings
to reduce energy use in Europe by about the same amount represented by gas
imports from Russia. Stephen Singer, the international director for energy
policy for the group, said the seriousness of the energy crisis in Europe should
underline the need for more investment in offshore wind, solar power and clean
biomass. Above all, said Mr. Singer, the crisis should "not become a field day
for perceived secure electricity fuels such as coal and nuclear."

In
Bulgaria, which switched off most of its nuclear reactors ahead of its accession
to the E.U. in 2007, President Georgi Parvanov has called for the temporary
reactivation of at least one disabled nuclear reactor to help the country meet
its heat and power needs as the dispute continues.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Twelve dead as winter weather freezes
Europe

A blast of
frigid weather has claimed up to a dozen lives in Europe as temperatures tumbled
below freezing overnight in what weather officials today dubbed the coldest
night of winter. Polish police said the latest victims who froze to death
yesterday included a 68-year-old homeless man found in an abandoned house in the
southeast town of Jozefow, and a 51-year-old man who lived alone in central
Eligiow and died a few steps away from his home. Five other deaths across Europe
have also been blamed on the harsh blast of wintry weather, including that of a
man in Milan who died when a canopy collapsed on him under the weight of
snowfall. Temperatures in Poland dropped as low as -25deg Celsius. According to
Interior Ministry data, hypothermia has been blamed for 76 deaths in Poland
since November 2008.

Snowfalls disrupted air traffic across Europe,
shutting down airports in Italy for several hours and paralysing TGV high-speed
trains in France. Milan's two airports Malpensa and Linate, as well as the
airports in Turin and Bergamo, were closed all morning after snow reached up to
30cm. The French weather service called it "the coldest night of winter'' so far
with temperatures ranging for minus nine degress in Paris - the coldest since
1997 - and minus 20 degrees in the northern Ardennes region. The rare sight of snow was seen in the southern Mediterranean port
of Marseille, closing the local airport and leaving some 12,000
households in the region without electricity.

Demand for power for
heating has soared and raised the risk of power cuts, especially in Brittany and
the southeast. Heavy snow has forced the closing of the mountainous
French-Italian border since last night.

In Germany, where earlier this
week a 77-year-old mentally ill woman froze to death, temperatures plummeted
overnight with many areas recording record lows. The
coldest place was Dippoldiswalde-Reinberg near Dresden in the east where the
mercury plunged to -27.7deg. "Temperatures like this suggest that in certain
places in the region the lowpoint must have been under the minus 30 mark,'' the
German weather office said in a statement.

The freezing weather is
expected to last through the week due to a stable mass of cold air coming from
Scandanavia and Siberia, the French weather service said.

"Arctic conditions" have
gripped Great Britain and parts of Europe, and it has gotten bad enough that the
British government has had to pay heating-bill subsidies for Londoners for the
first time ever. The temperature hasn't gotten cold enough in southern England
in the ten years of the subsidy program for the government to pay out the 25
pound checks.

In fact, as Fausta points out, the seas have begun to
freeze in the north:

Cold weather payouts for pensioners and the vulnerable reached
record levels today after Britain's deep freeze plunged temperatures as low as
minus 11C. Forecasters warned that tonight will be even colder. The
Government's bill will rise over 100 million as Londoners become eligible for
the payment for the first time since the scheme was introduced a decade ago.

This morning, the thermometer reached minus 10C in Farnborough,
Hampshire and minus 11C in parts of Scotland, which is colder than areas of
Greenland and the Antarctic. The Met Office said it expected temperatures to
go another degree colder tonight.

The bitter cold has left pavements
coated in ice and driving conditions treacherous across the country. Thousands
of motorists were left stranded in the busiest day of breakdowns in five years
yesterday. The AA and RAC said they had responded to more than 40,000
call-outs over the past 36 hours.

Being an 11-year veteran of
Arctic conditions, I decided to take a look at what -11 C would be in
Fahrenheit. I was somewhat disappointed with my British brethren. It turns out
to be just 12.2 F, as in +12.2 degrees. The other day, I had to clear my
driveway with the temperature at -14F, which would be -25C. Right now, on a
relatively warm day for January, it's 11F, which would be -11.67C, and I'm
sitting here in shorts and a golf shirt.

The subsidies kick into place
when sub-freezing temperatures last for seven or more days. In the decade of
global warming, London had never experienced that until this week. That will
cost the British 15 million, which comes on top of a 93 million bill for
subsidies in the north, where they're more often applied. Global warming, as it
turns out, gets pretty expensive.

With Arctic ice expanding at a rapid
rate and record cold temperatures gripping Europe, and here for that matter,
either someone must have sucked a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere, or the
greenhouse model has some serious flaws. The British lost a 15 million bet in
London this week on it.

Simple really, if the current solar trends
continue, it will soon be so cold that Al Gore will be the only person left on
the planet who doesn't think Al Gore is a kook. The quiet sun is going to cause
us a big problem when the growing season shortens to the point that crops cannot
mature. 2009 may be the first year that happens

From
'1930 through 1997, the annual average U.S. temperature actually
declined'

The post below is from a moderate Warmist site -- which
says that there has been warming but it is not a threat. They make below the
interesting point that although there has been no warming over the last 10
years, temperatures remained at an unusually high level -- giving rise to the
appearance of an overall warming trend since 1900 and justifying Warmist claims
that each recent year has been the 9th (etc.) hottest year of some recent time
period. The high temperatures have now however stopped with an overdue cooling
effect cutting in. Note also from the graph that the trend was always a weak
(and hence unreliable) one -- with highs in the 1930s also.

The data
are just in from the National Climatic Data Center and they show that for the
year 2008, the average temperature across the United States (lower 48 States)
was 1.34 degrees F lower than last year, and a mere one-quarter of a degree
above the long-term 1901-2000 average. The temperature in 2008 dropped back down
to the range that characterized most of the 20th century.

Figure 1 shows
the U.S. temperature history from 1895 to 2008. Notice the unusual grouping of
warm years that have occurred since the 1998 El Nino. Once the 1998 El Nino
elevated the temperatures across the country, they never seemed to return to
where they were before. Proponents of catastrophic global warming liked to claim
that is was our own doing through the burning of fossil fuels, but others were
more inclined to scratch their heads at the odd nature of the record and wait to
see what happened next.

You see, prior to 1998, there was little of
note in the long-term U.S. temperature record. Temperatures fluctuated a bit
from year to year, but the long-term trend was slight and driven by the cold
string of years in the late 19th and early 20th century rather than by any
warmth at the end of the record. In fact, from the period 1930 through 1997, the
annual average temperature actually declined a hair-despite the on-going
build-up of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

The only
suggestion that "global warming" had involved the U.S. was to be found in the
post-1997 period-a period unusual in that the temperatures went up and stayed up
at near-record levels year after year. It was not so much that temperatures
continued to climb after 1998, but just that they never fell.

This
grouping of warm years nearly doubled the apparent overall warming trend in U.S.
temperatures (starting in 1895) from 0.07 degrees F/dedade (ending in 1997) to
0.13 degrees F/decade (ending in 2007). And with this doubling of the warming
trend came the big push for emissions restrictions.

But now, 2008 comes
along and has broken this warm stranglehold. Perhaps this is an indication that
the conditions responsible for the unusual string of warm years have broken
down-and maybe they weren't a sudden apparition of anthropogenic global warming
after all. Only time will tell for sure. But, at least for now, things seem like
they have returned to a more "normal" state of being.

Despite the relentless efforts
to maintain worldwide panic over rising temperatures and all of the supposed
calamities that will ensue in the wake of the expected planetary heat wave (and
many of which should have befallen us by now), a growing cadre of skeptics,
supported by a bulk of research data, suggests the possibility that the "global
warming" scam may be in retreat.

As the cold of winter settles in on the
northern hemisphere, all of the hysteria of "global warming," or its less
specific alternative "climate change," rings increasingly hollow to the general
public. Weather patterns of the past decade indicate that the planet has been in
an undeniable cooling trend since prior to the new millennium. So the panicked
prophesies of cataclysmic upturns in the earth's average temperature simply do
not carry the emotional impact that they once held.

Specifically, the
"global warming" debate has now advanced out of its dire predictions phase. It
is no longer sufficient for celebrated professional alarmists to get in front of
news cameras and prognosticate as to how quickly the world will incinerate. Such
discussions are entering the observable evidence stage, in which those melting
icecaps had better start inundating Manhattan or else people will begin to
suspect they were being hoodwinked. To date, the scientifically quantifiable
data show nothing but the normal warming and cooling cycles, easily attributable
to the fluctuations in solar activity that have been the fate of the planet
since its creation.

To the dubious credit of its advocates, the entire
"global warming" controversy, along with the mountains of legislation and
regulation that resulted from its promotion amounted to perhaps the largest and
most successful example of royal nudity in the modern era. Entire industries
have sprung from the public pressure brought against oil companies and other
large-scale manufacturers who face increasingly outrageous demands to curtail
their dastardly assaults on mother earth.

Even now, though its supposed
ill effects are proving fraudulent, the reputation of Carbon Dioxide (ostensibly
the principal "greenhouse gas") as a threat to the future of all life on the
planet is widely, if not universally accepted among the nation's highest social
and political circles. Admittedly, neither group has a lock on intellect or
rational judgment, but their collective impact on the perceptions among the
general public cannot be ignored.

The ensuing 2012 deadline for the end
of sales of incandescent light bulbs in America reminds us all that government
will happily seize any situation as a means of expanding its control on society.
In what may first seem to be merely a bad joke, over at the Environmental
Protection Agency, a "greenhouse gas" tax on livestock, reaching as high as $175
for a dairy cow, is being contemplated. Main Street America is threatened with
forced fundamental changes, implemented in deference to an unfounded fable.

Most ominous of all, the coal industry, which makes up the backbone of
America's ability to produce electricity, is being openly targeted for eventual
eradication by the left-wing political establishment. So universally vilified is
it among the liberal elite that some "progressive" jurisdictions are currently
refusing to buy electrical power produced from coal.

Instead, they opt
for "green" sources of energy, not realizing (or perhaps deliberately ignoring
the facts) that the utilitarian efficiency of coal-fired electrical production
is the primary reason that such alternatives can be selectively employed at the
whims of the enviro-extremists.

Were their livelihoods and well-being
truly reliant on the fickle supplies of wind energy, for example, the green
ideologues would find its inconstancy and impracticality starkly enlightening. A
few cold dark nights with no wind, and thus no power, and they would quickly
learn to temper their idealism. Currently however, they bask in the luxury of
railing incessantly against their cheap, reliable electricity, while remaining
fully confident that the next time they flip the nearest light switch, the
darkness will flee.

Yet despite their relentless efforts to maintain the
worldwide panic over rising temperatures and all of the supposed calamities that
will ensue in the wake of the expected planetary heat wave (and many of which
should have befallen us by now), a growing cadre of skeptics, supported by a
bulk of research data, suggests the possibility that the "global warming" scam
may be in retreat.

No less a world leader than Vaclav Klaus, incoming
President of the European Union, denounces climate change hysteria as a hoax.
News from the Arctic is that the ice pack this winter is as large as it was in
1979. In other words, during the intervening years the world has warmed and
cooled, cyclically and irrespective of man-made "greenhouse gases," just as has
been the case throughout the millennia.

Of course, if allowed to advance
their agenda unchecked, the left will continue to exploit "climate change" fears
for as long as it can garner political capital from them. Then, as it does in
the wake of all of its other dismal failures, it will simply move on to some
other topic the moment the public grows suspicious and weary of the always
impending but never materializing climatic catastrophes.

Until such
time, Al Gore will continue his lucrative practice of giving speeches addressing
the "end of the world," for as long as sycophantic crowds are willing to ignore
his insincerity and continue paying exorbitant sums of money to be propagandized
about the impending apocalyptic heat waves. And the network news apparatus will
persist in its attempts to convince the American people that only through the
expanded powers of government can humanity hope to survive the ordeal.

Yet many among the scientific and political communities are recognizing
the need to distance themselves from the climate change alarmism. Others, who
pragmatically supported the ruse despite having access to empirical data that
refuted it, will suffer long-term credibility deficits that inevitably befall
such shameless opportunism.

Despite the seeming sea change in the
political landscape last November, or the eagerness with which the incoming
president intends to exploit environmental fears to his advantage, "global
warming" may soon take its place along side Bigfoot, Y2K, and the Bermuda
triangle on the ash heap of fabricated history.

Lights
go out as Britain bids farewell to the traditional bulb despite health fears
about eco-bulbs

Throughout war, disaster and recession, it has kept
Britain illuminated for more than 120 years. But the traditional incandescent
lightbulb is finally being switched off for the last time. Retailers have
stopped replenishing stocks of conventional 100watt bulbs and will have run out
within weeks. The voluntary withdrawal - part of a Government campaign to force
people into buying low-energy fluorescent bulbs - follows the scrapping of the
150w bulb last year.

The move has angered medical charities who say the
low-energy alternatives can trigger a host of ailments, including migraines,
epilepsy and skin rashes.

The lightbulb revolution was first signalled by
Gordon Brown in 2007. The Government says the switch to low-energy bulbs will
reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by around five million tonnes a year - the
equivalent to the emissions from a typical 1gigawatt coal-fired power
station.

Low-energy lightbulbs are miniature versions of the fluorescent
striplights common in offices and kitchens. They use just a quarter of the
energy of a conventional bulb. A single bulb can save a household around 7
pounds a year.

However, critics complain that compact fluorescent bulbs
contain mercury, making them dangerous to dispose of, and give off a harsh light
more suited to offices than living rooms. They can also take up to a minute to
reach full brightness and do not work with dimmer switches. Some do not even fit
conventional lightbulb sockets.

Under the voluntary ban, retailers agreed
to stop replenishing stocks of 100w and 75w bulbs at the start of the year,
while 60w bulbs will start to be phased out this time next year. All
incandescent bulbs will be banned by 2012. The 100w version is the most popular
type sold in the UK. It is used in ceiling lights. The 60w bulb is usually used
for table lamps and reading lights. A spokesman for Tesco, which is Britain's
largest seller of lightbulbs, said: `All the 100w and 75w incandescent
lightbulbs will be gone in the next couple of weeks.'

Medical charities
say they have been swamped with complaints that the flicker of compact
fluorescent bulbs can trigger migraines and epilepsy attacks. The charities are
lobbying the Government to allow an `opt out' for people with health problems so
they can continue to use the older bulbs. Around one in ten people suffers from
a migraine. Lee Tomkins, of Migraine Action Association, said: `We're
recommending that people stockpile the old ones for now.'

She advises
people who suffer from migraines to avoid using fluorescent bulbs as reading
lights, or in living areas and kitchens. The bulbs do not flicker at a rate
normally linked to health problems. Researchers, however, say the light emitted
by fluorescent bulbs is made up of a disproportionate amount of red and blue,
which can cause the problems.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as
1979

Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years
ago. Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal
those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close. Ice levels had
been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last
quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate
of change on record, either upwards or downwards. The data is being reported by
the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from
satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar
regions.

Each year, millions of square kilometers of sea ice melt and
refreeze. However, the mean ice anomaly -- defined as the seasonally-adjusted
difference between the current value and the average from 1979-2000, varies much
more slowly. That anomaly now stands at just under zero, a value identical to
one recorded at the end of 1979, the year satellite record-keeping
began.

Sea ice is floating and, unlike the massive ice sheets anchored to
bedrock in Greenland and Antarctica, doesn't affect ocean levels. However, due
to its transient nature, sea ice responds much faster to changes in temperature
or precipitation and is therefore a useful barometer of changing
conditions.

Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole
could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery.
Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC's Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this
was due in part to colder temperatures in the region. Chapman says wind patterns
have also been weaker this year. Strong winds can slow ice formation as well as
forcing ice into warmer waters where it will melt.

Why were predictions so wrong? Researchers had expected the
newer sea ice, which is thinner, to be less resilient and melt easier. Instead,
the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air,
and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and
Ice Data Center.

In May, concerns over disappearing sea ice led the U.S.
to officially list the polar bear a threatened species, over objections from
experts who claimed the animal's numbers were increasing.

In the fall of 1997, when the Clinton administration was
forming its position for the Kyoto climate treaty talks, Lawrence H. Summers
argued that the United States would risk damaging the domestic economy if it set
overly ambitious goals for reducing carbon emissions. Mr. Summers, then the
deputy Treasury secretary, said at the time that there was a compelling
scientific case for action on global warming but that a too-rapid move against
emissions of greenhouse gases risked dire and unknowable economic consequences.
His view prevailed over those of officials arguing for tougher standards, among
them Carol M. Browner, then the administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency, and her mentor, Al Gore, then the vice president.

Today, as the
climate-change debate once again heats up, Mr. Summers leads the economic team
of the incoming administration, and Ms. Browner has been designated its White
House coordinator of energy and climate policy. And Mr. Gore is hovering as an
informal adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. As Mr. Obama seeks to find the
right balance between his environmental goals and his plans to revive the
economy, he may have to resolve conflicting views among some of his top
advisers.

While Mr. Summers's thinking on climate change has evolved
over the last decade, his views on the potential risks to the economy of an
aggressive effort to limit carbon emissions have not. But he now works for a
president-elect who has set ambitious goals for addressing global warming
through a government-run cap-and-trade system. It may once again prove to be Mr.
Summers's role to inject a rigorous economist's reality check into the debate
over the scope and speed of an attack on global warming.

According to a
transition official familiar with Mr. Summers's thinking, he is wary of moving
very quickly on a carbon cap, because doing so could raise energy costs, kill
jobs and deepen the current recession. He foresees a phase-in of several years
for any carbon restraint regime, particularly if the economy continues to be
sluggish, a slower timetable than many lawmakers and environmentalists are
pressing. Mr. Summers and Peter R. Orszag, the economist whom Mr. Obama has
designated director of the White House budget office, have both argued that a
tax on carbon emissions from burning gasoline, coal and other fuels might be a
more economically efficient means of regulating pollutants than a cap-and-trade
system, under which an absolute ceiling on emissions is set and polluters are
allowed to buy and sell permits to meet it.

But Mr. Obama and Ms. Browner
have ruled out a straight carbon tax, perhaps mindful of the stinging political
defeat the Clinton administration suffered in 1993 when, prodded by Mr. Gore, it
proposed one. Mr. Obama was asked in a television interview last month whether
he would consider imposing a stiff tax on gasoline, whose price has now fallen
to below $2 a gallon after cresting above $4 a gallon last summer. He replied
that while American families were getting some relief at the pump, they were
hurting in other ways, through rising unemployment and falling home values. "So
putting additional burdens on American families right now, I think, is a
mistake," he said.

At least for the present, then, the idea of a carbon
tax has been shelved, and Mr. Obama's economic and environmental advisers are
working, along with Congress, to devise a cap-and-trade system. But difficult
debates lie ahead within the White House, between the White House and Congress,
and within the Democratic Party, whose deep divisions on climate change break
down along ideological and geographical lines.

Sound science put to
rest numerous unsubstantiated global warming scares in 2008. Sensationalist
predictions that the North Pole would melt, polar bear numbers would decline,
hurricanes would run amok, devastating droughts would occur, and Antarctic ice
sheets would flood the southern seas never materialized. Unfortunately, this
will not stop the purveyors of gloom and doom from creating similar false global
warming scares and sensationalist predictions for 2009. Keeping in mind the
following 10 global warming truths will help us avoid falling prey to global
warming scams in the upcoming New Year.

Global temperatures are not
rising. The warmest year in the past century occurred a full decade ago, in
1998. Temperatures have been gradually and steadily falling for most of the past
decade. Temperatures in 2008 were no warmer than temperatures in
1980.

The Earth is colder than its long-term average. For most of the
past 10,000 years, global temperatures have been 1.0 to 3.0 degrees Celsius
warmer than our current climate. Twentieth century temperatures appear unusually
warm only when compared to the preceding Little Ice Age, which had the coldest
global temperatures of the past 10 millennia. The rise of human civilization
occurred in a much warmer climate than that of today.

Polar bear
populations are not declining; they're thriving. The global polar bear
population has more than doubled since the 1980s. Moreover, polar bears had no
problems surviving and flourishing in the much warmer temperatures that
dominated the past 10,000 years.

Polar ice is not shrinking. Arctic sea
ice has moderately declined in recent years, due in large part to a recent shift
in regional wind patterns. But in the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice has
been growing at a record pace. Polar ice as a whole is right on its long-term
average.

Global warming is not causing more droughts. Throughout the
twentieth century and since, global precipitation has been increasing, as has
global soil moisture. A recent paper in one of the world's foremost
peer-reviewed science journals noted, "the terrestrial surface is literally
becoming more like a gardener's greenhouse"--an environment that is great for
plant growth.

Higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are not killing
sea life. Numerous recent studies show that aquatic ecosystems become more
productive and robust under higher carbon dioxide conditions. Assertions that
higher carbon dioxide concentrations cause harmful ocean acidification are
unsupported by real-world evidence, ignore the prevalence of shellfish during
prior geological periods when there was much more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, and would apply to only a small subset of aquatic creatures versus
the vast majority of aquatic life that benefits from higher atmospheric carbon
dioxide.

Global warming is not causing more extreme weather. The
frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, and other extreme weather events is no
greater now than in prior decades and centuries. Even daily high temperature
records were more frequently broken 70 years ago, in the 1930s, than they are
today.

Global warming is not melting Mt. Kilimanjaro's alpine glacier.
Temperatures at Mt. Kilimanjaro have been slightly cooling since at least the
middle of the twentieth century, and those temperatures virtually never rise
above freezing. Scientists have long known that deforestation at the base of the
mountain is causing the mountaintop glacier to shrink, by reducing the moisture
and resultant precipitation in mountain updrafts.

Global deserts are not
growing. On the contrary, the Sahara Desert and others like it have been
retreating for decades.

Scientists do not agree on a policy of alarmism.
More than 32,000 scientists have signed a formal statement, prepared by a past
president of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored by an atmospheric
scientist at Harvard University, saying there is no global warming crisis. By
contrast, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has only 2,600 participants, many of whom are not scientists, and counts the
staff of activist groups Environmental Defense and Greenpeace as its lead
authors.

Hansen's
hysteria never stops. He even fabricates climate data in aid of his scares. His
temperature graphs are so edited that they are vastly different from the graphs
produced by others

AUSTRALIA'S use of coal and carbon emissions
policies are guaranteeing the "destruction of much of the life on the planet", a
leading NASA scientist has written in a letter to Barack Obama. The head of
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor James Hansen, has written
an open letter to Barack Obama calling for a moratorium on coal-fired power
stations and the use of next-generation nuclear power.

In the letter he
says: "Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large
as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet." Prof Hansen said
goals and caps on carbon emissions were practically worthless because of the
long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the air. "Instead a large part of the total
fossil fuels must be left in the ground. In practice, that means coal," he
wrote. "Nobody realistically expects that the large readily available pools of
oil and gas will be left in the ground."

Prof Hansen said that emissions
reduction targets, like Kevin Rudd's goal to cut emissions by a minimum of 5 per
cent and up to 15 per cent by 2020, do not work. "This approach is ineffectual
and not commensurate with the climate threat," he wrote of reduction plans. "It
could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet
and humanity."

Professor Hansen also works in the Department of Earth and
Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and has given testimony on climate
change to the US Congress. He said he wrote to Mr Obama as the incoming US
president is in a position to instigate global change and "his presidency may be
judged in good part on whether he was able to turn the tide (on climate change)
- more important, the futures of young people and other life will depend on
that".

He called for the end of coal plants that do not capture and store
carbon dioxide and for funding for "fourth generation" nuclear power plants that
could run on material now regarded as waste. Comment is being sought from
Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

It seems that NASA's James
Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), is at it again.
He just can't let the data speak for itself. In yet another egregious display of
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) arrogance, he changed the temperature data
from 1910-2008 to reflect what is clearly a cooling trend to reflect a warming
trend. (Y-axis = Annual Mean Temperatures in centigrade; X-axis =
Year)

These are the USHCN
(United States Historical Climatology Network) "raw" and "homogenized" data
plots from the GISTEMP (GISS Surface Temperature) website synthesized into one
chart with polynomial fit trend lines. As seen in this comparison chart, the
Blue Lines represent raw data -- clearly indicating a cooling trend. Whereas the
Red Lines are the adjusted trends after subjected to Hansen's own curiously
compensating algorithm. Junk in = Junk out.

Indeed this past year (2008)
is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of
global average temperature that is due to be released this month by the Met
Office's Hadley Centre in Great Britain. The global average for 2008 should come
in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for
2001-07.

Nevertheless, global warming partisans at the Met and elsewhere
have taken to assuring everyone that cool temperatures are "absolutely not"
evidence that global warming is on the wane. Yet those warning and cautionary
adamancies are always absent when it comes to linking heat waves to global
warming. "Curiouser and curiouser," said Lewis Carroll.

However, One
major glitch in the reporting of temperatures has been quietly forgotten by the
Met and others of AGW persuasion as documented here.... When the Soviet Union
fell in 1990 the number of reporting weather stations around the world declined
from a high of 15,000 in 1970 to 5,000 in 2000, no appropriate compensatory
weighting mechanism was thereafter applied. Such an absence critically skews
everything thereafter to the warmer side of things, since it takes some of the
coldest places on the planet (like Siberia) out of the equation. With that
absence, it's likely getting colder than we now know. How convenient!

Said Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and
sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous peer-reviewed
research articles:

"Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in
denial and running for cover.... To the extent global warming was ever valid,
it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of
history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe,
phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of
which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence.
Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To
argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence."

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Green Comes Clean

The global
warming alarmist in chief has unveiled the environmentalists' real objective.
And no, protecting the planet is not their top concern.

In a letter
addressed to President-elect Obama and his wife, Michelle, James Hansen, head of
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, makes an appeal for a carbon tax,
ostensibly as a means for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that's
allegedly causing a dangerous greenhouse effect and warming trend. Hansen
suggests that the tax be levied "at the well-head or port of entry" from where
it "will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil
fuels."

This tax will have "near-term, mid-term, and long-term" effects
on "lifestyle choices," Hansen acknowledges. But he seems unconcerned about how
such coercion will rearrange the lives and manage the behavior of a people who
should be free of state coercion.

Acting either out of boldness or
desperation, Hansen goes on to reveal the environmentalist left's deeper
ambition: a collectivist redistribution of wealth. He recommends that the carbon
tax be returned to the public in "equal shares on a per capita basis." That
means wealthier Americans whose activities emit more CO2 will pay more in carbon
taxes than they get back, while those who earn less will receive more in refunds
than they will lose through taxes. "A person reducing his carbon footprint more
than average makes money," explains Hansen, while "a person with large cars and
a big house will pay a tax much higher than the dividend."

Hansen and his
ilk never seem to question whether the government should be involved in behavior
modification. They believe so zealously in their cause - establishing an
egalitarian society where conspicuous consumption is limited to the few who make
the rules - that they have no misgivings about using the police power of the
federal and state governments to beat society into shape.

Nor do they
question their hunch - the idea doesn't even rise to the level of theory - that
CO2 emissions are causing climate change even as there are ample reasons to
doubt it.

To his credit, Hansen expresses support in the letter for
fourth-generation "nuclear power and coal-fired power plants with carbon capture
and sequestration." But he's done so much yammering about global warming and
encouraging "young people" to do "whatever is necessary to block construction of
dirty coal-fired power plants," that any sensible ideas he might have are lost.
That's what happens, though, when a first-rate mind latches onto a third-rate
assumption.

Rather amazingly, the article below is from
the Leftist Puffington Host

By Harold Ambler

You are probably
wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his
actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person,
however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore. Mr. Gore has
stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is
absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest
whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind. What is wrong
with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression "climate
change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed,
and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene,
our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years
ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically
varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C.,
during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm
Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the
empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River
froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence
and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D.,
during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish
examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850,
during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and
even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb),
followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which
population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing,
and agriculture has flourished).

So, no one needs to say the words
"climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any
level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I
alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore
has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created
by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is
unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not
take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is
a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global
warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp
who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate
change," which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to
discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic
view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except
for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.

Indeed, it
is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum,
that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new,
ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against
reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly
have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated,"
he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the
others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets
warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has
uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of
obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between
temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph.
You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which
rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every
case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon
dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not
"complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast
quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason,
warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short
term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02
increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase
take place? During the super El Nino year of 1998.

3. What the alarmists
now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified
by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry
from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.

Meanwhile, the
theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply
wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot
absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only
absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about
everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat
follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption
level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is
based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming
via increased water vapor.

4. This mechanism has never been shown to
exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the
oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased
precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words,
the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By
the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than
carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays
that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative
might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by
the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water
in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.

If not carbon dioxide, what
does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term,
it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super
cycle" of which cooling La Ninas and warming El Ninos are parts. Having been in
its warm phase, in which El Ninos predominate, for the 30 years ending in late
2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La
Ninas predominate.

Since that time, already, a number of interesting
things have taken place. One La Nina lowered temperatures around the globe for
about half of the year just ended, and another La Nina shows evidence of
beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many
interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European
Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the
Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also,
for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

Concurrent
with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun
has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the
second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations
in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity
(although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on
global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish
physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars.
In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic
rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of
cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we
get fewer cosmic rays. When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated,
the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level
since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The
result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low
dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space
before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.

Svensmark has
proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is
this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely,
warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by
far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700,
during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the
globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch
burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.

Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009
is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years.
Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the
Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima,
such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown
to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of
solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution
of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say,
just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course
of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a
temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger
the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far
more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and
consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow?
Who is the "flat-Earther" now?

What about heat escaping from volcanic
vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming,
upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again,
who is the "flat-Earther" here?

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a
simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex,
chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect),
as shown by the Little Ice Age.

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore,
again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just
annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort
to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other,
graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that
causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth
living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal
smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan
Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the
meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a
pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering
continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your
apology.

And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a
thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.

P.S. One of the
last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice
caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the
summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted
and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single
molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard
job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of
summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by
volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the
alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a
misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.

More to the point,
2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica.
(There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following
website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I
ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around
Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record
sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then
the other one is, too.

For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum
sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way,
your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five
years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably
false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!

By Jon Jenkins (Jon Jenkins is an adjunct
professor of virology specialising in computer modelling at Bond University, and
a former independent member of the NSW Legislative Council)

THE
warmaholics are fond of using the phrase "official records going back to 1850",
but the simple facts are that prior to the 1970s, surface-based temperatures
from a few indiscriminate, mostly backyard locations in Europe and the US are
fatally corrupted and not in any sense a real record. They are then further
doctored by a secret algorithm to account for heat-island effects.
Reconstructions such as the infamously fraudulent "hockey stick" are similarly
unreliable.

The only precise and reliable temperature recording started
with satellite measurements in the 1970s. They show minuscule warming, all in
the northern hemisphere, which not only stopped in 2000 but had completely
reversed by 2008 (see graph).

The warmaholics also contend that global
mean temperature and sea level rises are at the upper range of the
Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change's projections. Well, no, actually they
are not. Sea level rises since 1900 are of the order of 1-2mm a year, which is
indistinguishable from tectonic movement, and the IPCC computer projections are
simply completely wrong.

The warmaholics argue that they have been able
to model all of the complex processes occurring on the earth, below the oceans
and in the atmosphere, and yet also admit in the same breath that they cannot
predict the single biggest transfer of energy that dwarfs all others on the
planet: El Nino. How can the two statements be resolved? They can not: the
computer models cannot predict either weather or climate.

Some
scientists argue that human-induced changes to CO2 levels are more sudden, but
this also does not stand up to scrutiny. Cataclysmic volcanic eruptions have
often placed more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in few minutes than man
induces in a decade. But, more importantly, they fail to explain how it is
possible for concentrations of CO2 to have exceeded 6000 parts per million
(about 20 times present levels) and yet for temperatures to have been cooler
than today's average? How is this possible if CO2 is the predominant driver of
temperatures?

Clear and unambiguous evidence against the warmaholics is
dismissed with consummate ease. For example, freezing temperatures across the
northern hemisphere and growing Antarctic ice sheets are explained away with
unproven theories such as deep ocean currents and ozone hole-induced winds.

And this in the same year that the theory of human-induced ozone
depletion was shattered by hard scientific findings that the rate constant for
one of the critical reactions in the computer models of
chlorofluorocarbon-induced ozone depletion was in error by a factor of 10 and as
a result CFCs alone cannot be responsible for observed ozone depletion.

The warmaholics, drunk on government handouts and quasi-religious
adulation from left-wing environmental organisations, often quote the consensus
of scientists as being supportive of the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory and
use the phrase "4000 scientists agree with the IPCC report" repeatedly. But
again this does not stand up to scrutiny. The vast majority of the IPCC report
is what-if scenarios, but all the what-if scenarios are centred around chapter
nine, because it is this chapter that says "we humans are responsible". If
chapter nine is wrong (that is, if the computer models are wrong) then the rest
of IPCC computer projections are just useless hand-waving.

More than
two-thirds of all authors of chapter nine of the IPCC's 2007 climate science
assessment are part of a clique whose members have co-authored papers with each
other and, we can surmise, very possibly at times acted as peer reviewers for
each other's work. Of the 44 contributing authors (no, not the 4000 often
quoted, just 44) to chapter nine, more than half have co-authored papers with
the co-ordinating lead authors of chapter nine. It is no surprise, therefore,
that the majority of scientists, who are sceptical of a human influence on
climate, were unrepresented in the authorship of chapter nine.

So that's
the real consensus: about 44 scientist mates who have vested interests in
supporting IPCC computer modelling agreed that "we did it", and this has become
the "consensus of thousands of the world's meteorologists". Compared with 31,000
(including 341 meteorologists) in the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
petition, the IPCC's 44 have no right to claim consensus at all.

Finally, to say "the question is not whether there is absolute certainty
about the extent of global warming or its effects" is scientific blasphemy.
Science is only about certainty and facts. The real question is in acknowledging
the end of fossil fuels within the next 200 years or so: how do we spend our
research time and dollars? Do we spend it on ideologically green-inspired
publicity campaigns such as emissions-trading schemes based on the fraud of the
IPCC, or do we spend it on basic science that could lead us to energy
self-sufficiency based on some combination of solar, geothermal, nuclear and
renewable sources? The alternative is to go back to the stone age.

A winter storm brought blankets of snow across Europe on Monday,
forcing the closure of an icy Eiffel Tower in Paris and causing flight
cancellations. Up to 10 centimetres of snow was recorded in parts of France, the
national weather service said. Most areas, including Paris, got about half that
amount. French authorities issued traffic alerts in around 30 regions because of
icy roads. The Eiffel Tower, one of Paris' main tourist attractions, was closed
because of slippery conditions.

"We can't put down salt because it's
metallic," Eiffel Tower press officer Isabelle Esnous said. "We can't use sand
either ... because it risks getting into the elevator (cogs)." The cold, she
said, was no problem, but snow could be dangerous.

Hundreds of passenger
were stranded Monday at the main Paris airport of Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle by
snow after scores of flights were cancelled. Some "1658 people will be
accommodated by Air France Monday evening in hotels at the airport hub at Roissy
after the cancellation of 120 Air France flights of the 400 scheduled since the
beginning of Monday afternoon, mainly to European destinations but also some
long haul services," the airline said. Passengers waiting for flights "will have
available food and hot drinks" at the end of a day described as "difficult" by
Air France. The Paris airports authority said passengers should ring their
airlines to see if their flights were operating and said some might not leave
Monday evening.

Traffic at Roissy and the second Paris airport at Orly
was due to return to normal Monday evening. Northern, central and western France
were hit by snow and freezing rain during Monday, causing accidents, one fatal.
Weather services warned that the thermometer would fall further during the week
as icy air arrived from Siberia and Scandinavia. Temperatures could fall to
between minus five and minus 10 centigrade (23 and 14 Fahrenheit) in the north
and northeast, forecasters said. The cold snap could last until the middle of
the month in much of the country.

National elecricity
consumption hit a record peak early Monday evening. In the Paris area
transport authorities had to suspend some bus services as snow and freezing rain
made roads impassable. At one point, heavy goods traffic moving towards Paris
was limited.

In Germany, heavy snowfall snarled road traffic and flight
delays and cancellations at the country's international airports. Duesseldorf
International Airport said no flights were allowed in or out between 6am and 9am
local time on Monday (1600 AEDT-1900 AEDT Monday) because clearing crews were
unable to keep up with the snow. More than 30 flights were cancelled because of
the bad weather, airport spokesman Christian Witt said. Up to 10 centimetres of
snow was reported in Duesseldorf and about 15 centimetres in Potsdam, just
outside Berlin.

Flights from Frankfurt International Airport were delayed
as much as an hour but none had to be cancelled. Traffic stopped for hours on
many of Germany's autobahns as snowploughs struggled to clear the roads amid
heavy post-holiday traffic. Germany's National Weather Service is forecasting
subzero temperatures for the coming days.

Snow also fell across Britain.
Children built snowmen in parts of England, including Cambridge.

"Researchers in
Australia say the growth of coral on the country's iconic Great Barrier Reef
(GBR) has fallen since 1990 to its lowest rate in 400 years"; variations of this
message have been repeated around the world from South Korea to London with
global warming, and the associated acidification of oceans, claimed to be the
cause.

These reports are repeating claims in an Australian Institute of
Marine Science (AIMS) media release made just last Friday to coincide with the
publication of research findings in the journal Science [1]. The media release
also claimed the research to be "the most comprehensive study to date on
calcification rates of GBR corals".

Having followed GBR issues for many
years I was surprised to hear global warming associated with slow coral growth
rates, indeed AIMS's researchers Janice Lough and David Barnes have published
detailed studies concluding that coral growth rates increase significantly with
an increase in annual average sea surface temperature [2].

Furthermore
growth rates actually decrease from north to south along the GBR as this
corresponds with a cooling temperature gradient of 2-3 degrees C. If there has
been a slowing in growth rates of coral over the last nearly 20 years, as
suggested by this new research, a most obvious question for me would be: Have
GBR waters cooled?

This new research paper in Science presents evidence
for a decline in coral growth rates since 1990, but no credible reason for the
decline. While the study hints that the cause could be ocean acidification no
direct evidence is provided to support this claim - not even a correlation.
Indeed no data is presented to suggest the PH (a measure of acidity) of GBR
waters has changed, and based on modelling of hypothetical changes in PH
associated with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide there is a timing
problem - the decline in calcification rates should apparently have started
years earlier.

Confronted with a lack of evidence in support of this
hypothesis - that ocean acidification has caused the drop in growth rates - the
researchers suggest in the paper "synergistic effects of several forms of
environmental stress" and implicate higher temperatures. But no data is
presented in the paper to contradict the well established relationship between
increasing temperature and increasing growth rates - though various confusing
statements are made and it is suggested that global warming has increased the
incidence of heat stress in turn reducing growth rates - while at the same time
the researchers acknowledge higher growth rates in northern, warmer, GBR waters.

Marine Biologist Walter Starck has perhaps aptly described the research
as part of "the proliferation of subprime research presenting low value findings
as policy grade evidence" and has suggested this has "science headed in the same
direction as Wall Street."

Interestingly, Queensland Premier, Anna
Bligh, has decided the "massive decline in the reef's growth" will require new
laws. None of this, however, gets us any closer to understanding why there has
been an apparent dramatic decline in the growth rates of GBR corals over the
last 20 years.

Monday, January 05, 2009

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ replies to a Greenie who knows
less than he thinks

"Constant Californian" writes to respond to my
piece on the global cooling of 2008:

"You may be aware of Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish scientist who was
long skeptical of global warming," he writes. "He is not anymore. His
complaint is with what he perceives as hysteria, and unsound policy. I wonder
if your line of reasoning has more to do with ideology and your view of
(proposed) policy, than a considered look at the science at work. The
mechanism of global warming is well-established. ...

"You write: 'It's
getting colder. 2008 was the coolest year in a decade.' That leaves the other
nine years to account for. If the last nine years were consecutively cooler,
you would have a cooling trend. The trend is in the other direction. "The
glaciers, Greenland and the polar ice cap are melting. Plants and species are
migrating northward to areas where they have not been seen in recorded
history. "And, according to The Washington Post (Jan. 12, 2008): 'Data
collected from around the globe indicate that 2007 ranks as the second-warmest
year on record, according to a new analysis from climatologists at NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies. ... Seven of the eight warmest years on
record have occurred since 2001.'

"There are a number of good books on
this topic. The one that convinced me was 'Field Notes from a Catastrophe: A
Frontline Report on Climate Change,' by Elizabeth Kolbert, Bloomsbury,
2007.

"I admire your courage in often taking the unpopular view. But a
view may be popular because it is accurate, not because people are being
deluded or misled, and that is the case here. ... "I wonder if your time might
be better spent -- and the public better served -- if you were to critique
policy as regards energy and conservation rather than the problems (and global
warming is only the most worrisome) that stem from long-term profligate and
inefficient energy use."

I replied: Of course it would be more
convenient for the Luddites if I were to accept their underlying assumptions and
limit myself to "critiquing policy as regards energy and conservation." Just as,
in 1500, it would have been judged much safer to study how best to discover and
destroy witches rather than to challenge whether the old crones had any demonic
powers in the first place. As a matter of fact, challenging the existence of the
supernatural powers of witches was prima facie proof that the challenger was
himself a witch ("warlock," whatever), which was likely to get you burned.
Amazingly, under those circumstances, publicly expressed opinion -- holding that
the demonic powers of witches was real -- was nearly unanimous! Ain't sealed
systems grand?

Yes, the mechanism of global warming is well-established.
It's primarily solar, and has nothing to do with the tiny amount of "greenhouse
gas" mankind produces. Or were there too many cars and coal-fired generating
plants 10,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age spontaneously melted away? (See
the nice charts at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation.)

What's not
well-established is any ability to predict whether the globe will be warmer or
cooler in three years, let alone 30 or 300. When major green groups charted
"greenhouse gas" emissions for 1991 (they sent me a lovely colorful graph,
showing America as the "worst offender," of course) they listed the Philippines
as a quite small producer, way "down the curve." This is because the Philippines
are a "good" country, you understand, where people "know their place" and have
properly resigned themselves to living in poverty, mostly doing without private
motorcars or air conditioners, fertilizing their rice fields with human feces,
etc.

I called the authors of the chart to ask how the Philippines could
possibly have produced a tiny mount of greenhouse gases that year, since that's
the year Mount Pinatubo erupted. They pointed me to a footnote that said "from
man-made sources." If you're only going to measure greenhouses gases from
man-made sources, you're only going to show greenhouse gases from man-made
sources, making America's 1991 atmospheric contribution appear larger that the
Philippines', which is absurd. Shouldn't we be asking how much is actually up
there, and where it actually came from?

If water vapor and CO2 are both
greenhouse gases, and there's 100 times more water vapor than CO2 in the
atmosphere, what effect would it have on the level of total greenhouse gases to
double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Look up the Newsweek cover of
April 28, 1975, on "The Cooling World." You'll find many of this same gang
urging the same brand of government "energy policy" takeovers to halt the
dangerous trend of "global cooling." As well they might, since the next Ice Age
will be a real problem.

It's all about seizing control of (and
eviscerating) the economic advantages of the Western nations, which is why the
greens show no interest in merely launching some reflective gravel into orbit,
which would probably lower global temperature by a couple of degrees. (Look up
1816, the "Year Without Summer.") After all, if the alleged problem were simply
and cheaply solved, how could they get any traction for their real Luddite
agenda? Why do you suppose they sue to block virtually any project that might
advance human welfare, citing the safety of weeds and bugs so obscure the
litigants probably wouldn't recognize one if you plopped it on their dinner
plate?

China and India aren't about to stop churning out all the carbon
smoke they deem necessary to catch and overtake any Western nations moronic
enough to cripple their own economies out of some bizarre feeling of guilt that
they "use too much energy."

Energy use per capita is a pretty good
measure of how far you're advancing from the Stone Age, when life expectancy was
under 40. There is no energy shortage. We use less than 1 percent of the solar
energy that streams past us. We need to start using a lot more of it. If some of
us get rich in the process (without "taxpayer subsidies,") so much the better.
That's what humankind is good at.

Julian
Simon proved Paul Ehrlich and the "Population Bomb" folks wrong about their
predictions re "running out of" whatever you care to name so many times they
stopped accepting Mr. Simon's wagers.

Only collectivists consider they
have any moral right to criticize the "profligacy" of those who create enough
wealth to use whatever they can buy on the free market, in any way they choose,
whether it be "energy," land or long underwear. Collectivists are would-be
thieves. They simply lack the courage to pull out a gun and deprive the
"profligate fat cats" of their wealth directly -- they prefer to hire bully-boys
in government uniforms to do the job for them, under the sanctified cloak of
"shared sacrifice." The Greens don't want to see "energy efficiency." They want
to artificially make energy so expensive that we're forced to accept "reduced
expectations" for our lifestyles and life expectancies.

If the greens
choose to use less energy, God bless them. Let them go squat around some jungle
fire in loincloths, eating half-cooked monkey meat. But somehow, this prospect
does not appear to please them. Somehow, they will be happy only if they can
impose energy-deficient poverty on me.

Are the glaciers melting? Is that
a good measure of climate change? See
www.nationalcenter.org/NPA235.html.

As relentlessly bad as the news about global warming seems to be,
with ice at the poles melting faster than scientists had predicted and world
temperatures rising higher than expected, there was at least a reservoir of
hope stored here in Canada's vast forests. The country's 1.2 million square
miles of trees have been dubbed the "lungs of the planet" by ecologists
because they account for more than 7 percent of Earth's total forest lands.
They could always be depended upon to suck in vast quantities of carbon
dioxide, naturally cleansing the world of much of the harmful heat-trapping
gas.

But not anymore. In an alarming yet little-noticed series of
recent studies, scientists have concluded that Canada's precious forests,
stressed from damage caused by global warming, insect infestations and
persistent fires, have crossed an ominous line and are now pumping out more
climate-changing carbon dioxide than they are sequestering. Worse yet, the
experts predict that Canada's forests will remain net carbon sources, as
opposed to carbon storage "sinks," until at least 2022, and possibly much
longer.

So serious is the problem that Canada's federal government
effectively wrote off the nation's forests in 2007 as officials submitted
their plans to abide by the international Kyoto Protocol, which obligates
participating governments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Under the
Kyoto agreement, governments are permitted to count forest lands as credits,
or offsets, when calculating their national carbon emissions. But Canadian
officials, aware of the scientific studies showing that their forests actually
are emitting excess carbon, quietly omitted the forest lands from their Kyoto
compliance calculations.

"The forecast analysis prepared for the
government . indicates there is a probability that forests would constitute a
net source of greenhouse gas emissions," a Canadian Environment Ministry
spokesman told the Montreal Gazette.

Canadian officials say global
warming is causing the crisis in their forests. Inexorably rising temperatures
are slowly drying out forest lands, leaving trees more susceptible to fires,
which release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Higher temperatures
also are accelerating the spread of a deadly pest known as the mountain pine
beetle, which has devastated pine forests across British Columbia and is
threatening vital timber in the neighboring province of Alberta. More than
50,000 square miles of British Columbia's pine forest have been stricken so
far with the telltale markers of death: needles that turn bright red before
falling off the tree.

Bitter cold Canadian winters used to kill off
much of the pine beetle population each year, naturally keeping it in check.
But the milder winters of recent years have allowed the insect to proliferate.
That grim reality is stoking a new debate over commercial logging, one of
Canada's biggest industries.

Environmentalists contend that the
extreme stresses on Canada's forests, particularly the old-growth northern
forest, mean that logging ought to be sharply curtailed to preserve the
remaining trees-and the carbon stored within them-for as long as possible.
Moreover, they argue that the disruptive process of logging releases even more
carbon stored in the forest peat, threatening to set off what they describe as
a virtual "carbon bomb"-the estimated 186 billion tons of carbon stored in
Canada's forests, which is equivalent to 27 years worth of global carbon
emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Weirdly enough this
isn't the first time that "eco-scientists" have suggested that we need to do
away with the Canadian forests. Trees worsens global warming because they absorb
sunlight which would otherwise be reflected by snow, according to the National
Academy of Scientists - don't you know. A problem the beetles seem to be solving
for us. And yet they still complain.

Moreover, these same "scientists"
want to ban logging. It's too bad that the Chicago Tribune will soon stop
helping us to control this menace by using so much paper. But, alas, they are
going out of out of business. Undoubtedly, also due to global warming.

Melting icebergs, so long the iconic image of global
warming, are triggering a natural process that could delay or even end climate
change, British scientists have found. A team working on board the Royal Navy's
HMS Endurance off the coast of Antarctica have discovered tiny particles of iron
are released into the sea as the ice melts. The iron feeds algae, which blooms
and sucks up damaging carbon dioxide (CO2), then sinks, locking away the harmful
greenhouse gas for hundreds of years.

The team think the process could
hold the key to staving off globally rising temperatures. Lead researcher
Professor Rob Raiswell, from Leeds University, said: `The Earth itself seems to
want to save us.'

As a result of the findings, a ground-breaking
experiment will be held this month off the British island of South Georgia, 800
miles south east of the Falklands. It will see if the phenomenon could be
harnessed to contain rising carbon emissions. Researchers will use several tons
of iron sulphate to create an artificial bloom of algae. The patch will be so
large it will be visible from space.

Scientists already knew that
releasing iron into the sea stimulates the growth of algae. But
environmentalists had warned that to do so artificially might damage the
planet's fragile ecosystem. Last year, the UN banned iron fertilisation in the
Great Southern Ocean.

However, the new findings show the mechanism has
actually been operating naturally for millions of years within the isolated
southern waters. And it has led to the researchers being granted permission by
the UN to move ahead with the experiment. The scientist who will lead the next
stage of the study, Professor Victor Smetacek, said: `The gas is sure to be out
of the Earth's atmosphere for several hundred years.'

The aim is to
discover whether artificially fertilising the area will create more algae in the
Great Southern Ocean. That ocean is an untapped resource for soaking up CO2
because it doesn't have much iron, unlike other seas. It covers 20million square
miles, and scientists say that if this could all be treated with iron, the
resulting algae would remove three-and-a-half gigatons of carbon dioxide. This
is equivalent to one eighth of all emissions annually created by burning fossil
fuels such as oil, gas and coal. It would also be equal to removing all carbon
dioxide emitted from every power plant, chimney and car exhaust in the rapidly
expanding industries of India and Japan. However, the experts warn it is too
early to say whether it will work.

The team from ice patrol ship HMS
Endurance used sledgehammers to chip deep into the interior of a 33ft-long mass
of polar ice from half-a-dozen house-sized icebergs that had blown ashore in
Antarctica. Once back in the UK, they used a special microscope to analyse the
samples, which revealed what they had been looking for - tiny iron particles,
only a few millionths of a millimetre wide, embedded deep within the ice. Until
now, it was thought that the only source of iron in the Southern Ocean was wind
blowing in metal compounds from the deserts of nearby continents like Australia.
But the research has disproved this. Prof Raiswell said: `These particles
measure only a fraction of a millimetre, but they have great importance for the
global climate.'

Rising global temperatures, particularly over the past
50 years, have increased the rate at which polar ice melts, causing sea levels
to rise. Ten of the warmest years on record have been since 1991, with experts
predicting that 2009 could be the hottest year yet. The climate-change effect is
set to substantially increase over the coming decades, as developing industrial
nations pump out more CO2. Temperatures along the Antarctic Peninsula alone have
increased by 2.5C over the past 50 years.

But for every percentage point
increase in the amount of ice that breaks off, Prof Raiswell calculates that a
further 26million tons of CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. Polar expert
Professor Smetacek and a 49-strong German research team is due to set sail from
Cape Town in the icebreaker Polarstern in the next few days to conduct their
groundbreaking experiment. Crucially, the scientists want to know how much algae
will sink to the bottom of the ocean where the CO2 will be safely trapped. Algae
that falls a couple of miles below the surface will remain there for hundreds of
years; algae that remains only a few hundred metres from the surface releases
carbon back into the atmosphere.

Dr Phil Williamson, scientific
co-ordinator of the Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere study, funded by the UK's
National Environment Research Council, called the research `exciting'. `We have
images from satellites which show the ocean stays green for weeks afterwards but
the key will be whether it stays that way,' said Dr Williamson.

Schemes
to fertilise the seas with iron have in the past been driven by commercial
interests. This is the biggest ever scientific attempt. Last May, the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity called a halt to fertilisation around the
Antarctic until there was more detailed scientific data. But the British
findings led to the go-ahead for Professor Smetacek's team from the Alfred
Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven,
Germany.

Nonetheless, even Prof Raiswell has called the project `highly
controversial'. He said: `Oceans aren't isolated boxes and it would affect the
surrounding areas as well. `We don't know what effect that would have. The
ecosystems are very complicated. If the iceberg iron is useful, then it will
just buy us more time. `The Earth might have fightback mechanisms but we must
still try to reduce our CO2 emissions.'

Prof Smetacek said the issue is
too complex not to be explored by scientists. He warned: `Objections will be
swept away when our powerlessness in the face of climate change becomes
apparent.'

A PIONEERING
climate change project in Africa run by Robin Birley, the socialite, has been
accused by the European commission, its main donor, of making unsubstantiated
claims about its environmental impact. The project has received more than 1m
pounds in public grants and money from celebrities in the music and film
business. They include Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones and Brad Pitt, the
actor. The project attempts to offset an individual's carbon footprint by paying
poor farmers in Mozambique to plant trees, which absorb CO2, and to protect
existing forests.

The commission's criticism comes amid increased
concern about the worth of these fashionable but largely unregulated carbon
offset schemes. Critics say it is almost impossible to guarantee that the trees
will survive the length of time needed to offset any significant carbon
emissions.

Birley, the stepbrother of Zac Goldsmith, the
environmentalist, set up the N'hambita Community Carbon project five years ago
in partnership with Edinburgh University. His company, Envirotrade, manages it
and sells "carbon credits" to the public, while the university monitors the
emission levels and the deforestation rates. The project, based on the edge of
the Gorongosa national park, had promised to bring "enormous and positive
social, economic and environmental change to the developing world".

However, The Sunday Times has obtained a highly critical report from the
European commission that says "the quality of the technical work . [is] far
below what could reasonably be expected of a pilot project managed by a
university". Written last May, just before the five-year funding period came to
an end, the report noted that the project "continued to make positive claims
about its impact that could not be substantiated". The commission also warned
that the money flowing into the Gorongosa area had attracted hundreds of poor
farmers who were now cutting down trees, contrary to the project's intention.

An official source said: "We also asked for disclosure about carbon
trades in the interest of transparency. None of this information was
forthcoming. [Envirotrade] are selling products that are not delivering what was
promised and the public needs to know."

The commission, which has so far
donated Euros 1.13m to the project, does not suggest there has been any
dishonesty. However, it felt that the scientific concerns raised with the
project since May 2006 remained unaddressed. Consequently, in October 2007 it
suspended payment of the last instalment of the grant, worth Euros 453,000. Both
the company and Edinburgh University say they will respond to all the criticism
in a report they are writing for the commission. In a statement, Birley said
that all the money raised so far from selling carbon credits - 750,000 pounds -
has gone back into the project and he has also invested his own money. He added
that the project's "well intentioned shortcomings" were to be expected with such
a challenging idea and Envirotrade had been transparent with all its clients.

However, one of the commission's main concerns was about the way carbon
credits are being sold when it is difficult to verify the amount of emissions
actually saved. Despite this, Envirotrade has sold a further 100,000 worth of
carbon credits since it received the report....

The Government's flagship eco-town strategy has suffered another
damaging blow after an independent report said one of the proposed towns was
"unworkable". The Pennbury plan for a 12,000 home development near Leicester is
one of 12 shortlisted by ministers as part of their plans to build a string of
environmentally sustainable new towns across the country. But a leading
consultancy on urban design and planning has damned the Pennbury scheme,
submitted by the Co-operative supermarket and property group, as economically
"unsustainable", "ambiguous" and "fundamentally weak".

The Halcrow Group,
which was commissioned by four local authorities covering Leicester and the
surrounding towns and villages to assess the Co-op's plans, said the new town
was likely to produce fewer jobs than envisaged, would suffer from poor
transport links and would be out of keeping in what is currently a rural
setting. The report's findings are another major setback for the Government's
eco-town proposals, which have already been widely condemned by opponents as
threatening the green field character of many sites for little if any
environmental or economic benefit.

The strategy has been beset by
problems since it was placed at the heart of Labour's policy agenda by Gordon
Brown at his first party conference as leader in September 2007. A shortlist of
15 was cut to 12 after developers dropped out and schemes were reconsidered. The
final list of 10 is expected to be announced shortly. The schemes will then go
through the normal planning process. But there are growing doubts over the
viability of several of the schemes in the wake of the worsening housing
crash.

Eco-towns, which will contain between 5,000 and 20,000 homes, are
intended to be carbon neutral and act as an "exemplar" for
environmentally-friendly development. Each must contain at least 30 per cent
"affordable" housing, while properties must be on average only a 10-minute walk
away from public transport and local services, such as doctors' surgeries and
primary schools. At least one person in each household should be able to get to
work without a car.

However, the Government admitted in November that
only one of the 12 sites being considered is officially ranked as "generally
suitable" for an eco-town. Rackheath, in Norfolk, was judged to be Grade A
because it was near Norwich and a working railway line. The vast majority of the
schemes, including Pennbury, were judged to be Grade B - which meant they "might
be a suitable location subject to meeting specific planning and design
objectives".

But the new report on Pennbury casts doubt on this. It
states: "The Co-op have at this stage in the planning process provided
insufficient information to support the Pennbury proposal at this moment. We
have serious reservations at this stage that neither the required transport
infrastructure, nor the level of jobs required can actually be delivered. "Both
the economic strategy and transport proposals should therefore be substantially
revised, as these are fundamental to the overall sustainability of the
concept."

Dr Kevin Feltham, a Leicestershire county councillor and a
campaigner against the scheme, said: "This report has left the Co-op's plans for
Pennbury in tatters. The time is now ripe for them to withdraw their bid in the
face of overwhelming evidence that the plans are unworkable."

The
report's findings are a particular blow to the Pennbury scheme because Halcrow's
consultants said it could have brought potential benefits to the region "in
terms of new jobs, homes, community facilities and infrastructure, as well as
pioneering new approaches to zero carbon living". But it said the plans "are not
matched by sufficiently detailed commitments and proposals to ensure that these
objectives can actually be delivered." It found:

* The Co-op had produced
no convincing evidence to support the assumption that 60 per cent of residents
would be able to work in the town.

* The planned location has poor
transport links, making it unattractive for potential employers and
businesses.

* It is unclear from population projections whether there is
in fact a need for so many new homes in the area.

* There has been no
survey of local environmental features such as ecology, landscape and cultural
heritage.

However, the Co-operative Group defended its proposals,
claiming the Halcrow report recognised the potential benefits of the Pennbury
eco-town. Ruairidh Jackson, its head of planning and property strategy, said:
"We are in close discussions with Leicester Regeneration Company about the
benefits our proposals offer and to improve the regeneration potential of the
city as a whole. This story goes far wider than simply employment. It's about
education and skills, about helping regeneration sites to come forward, about
housing in the city, about unlocking public transport investment and, not least,
about helping Leicester to market and promote itself to additional sources of
investment. "Our proposals are fully complementary to these objectives and we
believe that we can help Leicester to be an even stronger and more successful
city."

The four councils who commissioned the report - Harborough
District, Oadby & Wigston Borough, Leicestershire County and Leicester City
- are themselves split on the question of the eco-town. Leicestershire County
opposes the scheme and has accused Leicester City, which backs it, of being "too
easily bought" by the promise of 5 million pounds from the Co-op to carry out a
feasibility study into running a tram from Pennbury into Leicester city centre.
Harborough and Oadby have yet to decide whether they support the
plans.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Britain in grip of longest cold snap for 10
years

Britain is in the grip of
the longest cold snap for more than 10 years as forecasters predict another week
of freezing temperatures.

Cold, mainly dry and frosty conditions, which
set in on Boxing Day, are likely to continue for at least seven days as the
weather is dominated by a huge region of high pressure coming from the
Continent. For this time of year, forecasters say it is likely to be the longest
prolonged spell of cold weather - where temperatures barely rise above zero
centigrade (32F) - since 1996. Usually long spells of cold weather occur around
February when the effect of warming from the Atlantic sea is reduced. "We have
another five to seven days of colder weather still to come which will make it
the longest spell since 1996 at this early stage of winter," said Philip Eden,
the Daily Telegraph weather correspondent.

"Usually prolonged cold spells
happen in late January and February because the weather in early winter comes
from the warm Atlantic sea rather than the cold Continent. "Over the last 20
years winters temperatures have risen quite substantially so we have perhaps
forgotten what it is like to have this sort of spell of weather. "They have
become less common." Not only has the weather been cold but for huge swathes of
the country, it has been extremely dry. "Over a huge part of the UK it hasn't
actually rained since the 13th of December," said Mr Eden. "Three weeks without
rain at the this time is very unusual and again has not happened since around
1996."

Frigid temperatures forced organizers of the U.S. Cross Country
Championship sprint race to cancel the event Saturday. Race organizers hoped to
hold the sprint races on Sunday, if the cold snap that has gripped much of
Alaska for the past week loosens its grip a bit. Forecasters, however, said the
bitterly cold weather was expected to continue.

After several delays in
which race organizers kept an eye on the temperature, the race at Kincaid Park
was canceled mid-afternoon. Organizers watched as the mercury rose from 13
degrees below zero to about 6 below zero. In the end, it wasn't enough, said
race spokesman John Quinley. The cutoff for running the race is 4 degrees below
zero. Quinley said the event has been rescheduled for Sunday with an 11:30 a.m.
start. Quinley also said the athletes were disappointed, but the temperature was
still too cold and the sun was starting to go down. "They were disappointed,"
Quinley said. "They were primed and ready to ski."

Temperatures in
Fairbanks were 40 below on Saturday afternoon. Forecasters said it would dip to
50 below over the weekend.

In
a pair of recent columns claiming humans are causing a global-warming crisis,
Ben Bova disparages mere "assertions" while saying people need to rely on
"observable, measurable facts." While Bova's concern about Earth's climate is
admirable, he should follow his own advice regarding assertions versus facts.
Bova asserts Earth has a "rising fever." Yet the fact is that global
temperatures are unusually cool.

For most of the past 10,000 years
temperatures have been 1.0 to 3.0 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today.
The 0.6 degree rise in temperatures during the 20th century occurred from the
baseline of the little ice age, which saw the coldest global temperatures during
the past 10,000 years. Earth has a "rising fever" only if we pretend the little
ice age was "normal" and ignore Earth's long-term temperature facts.

Bova asserts "the loss of sea ice in the Arctic is threatening the
survival of polar bears." Yet the fact is that polar bear numbers have doubled
since the 1980s. Moreover, Antarctic sea ice is growing and has been setting
records for much of the past year. If "global" warming is causing receding polar
ice, then why is Antarctic sea ice setting growth records?

Bova asserts
"measurements ... show that the rise in global temperatures matches quite
closely the increase in carbon dioxide." Yet the fact is that solar scientists
at Harvard and other leading universities have published research in the world's
leading scientific journals showing that temperatures match solar output much
more closely than carbon dioxide, even in the 20th century.

Bova asserts
that as a result of global warming "much of our crop land turns to desert." Yet,
the fact is that global precipitation and global soil moisture have increased
during the 20th century, and the Sahara Desert and other deserts around the
world are in retreat.

Bova asserts we run the risk of a breaching a
"tipping point" or a "greenhouse cliff where the global climate shifts too
rapidly for us to protect ourselves from its drastic effects." Yet, the fact is
that in a recent survey of more than 500 climate scientists from around the
world, less than half agreed that "assuming climate change will occur, it will
occur so suddenly that a lack of preparation could result in devastation of some
areas of the world."

Bova asserts that in California's Yosemite National
Park warmer temperatures are allowing mice and pine trees to live at higher
altitudes than a century ago. Yet, the fact is that fossilized trees exist at
altitudes above the current California tree line, showing that temperatures were
significantly warmer 1,000 years ago than today. Plant and animal species are
migrating to higher elevations only in comparison to the abnormally cold
temperatures of the little ice age that ended just over a century ago. For most
of the past 10,000 years, warmer temperatures enabled mice and trees to live at
altitudes significantly higher than is possible today.

Global-warming
activism is long on unsubstantiated assertions and short on objective facts.
Only by comparing today's temperatures to the abnormal cold of the little ice
are - and by completely ignoring the warmer temperatures that predominated
during most of the past 10,000 years - can global-warming activists paint a
picture of a planet suffering a global warming crisis. Moreover, sound science
has thrown cold water on each and every one of the alleged global-warming
crises, such as endangered polar bears, melting ice caps, etc., alleged to
result from global warming.

If media could be
found legally liable for worsening the current economic crisis, mightn't they be
similarly prosecuted for exaggerating anthropogenic global warming if it leads
citizens, companies, and governments to waste money solving a problem that
doesn't exist? Consider if you will a January 2008 cover story by E magazine
which predicted the end of winter as we know it.Given the often record cold that
has gripped the nation the last four weeks, "Losing Winter: As Climate Change
Takes Hold, Our Coldest Season is the First Casualty" seems the perfect example
of how dangerous -- and potentially costly -- the media's climate alarmism
is

Since 1970, average winter temperatures in New England have
increased 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit. In the U.S., 2006 was the warmest year on
record, and 1998 is number two. The last eight five-year periods were the
warmest since we began taking national records 112 years ago. During the past
25 to 30 years, says the National Climatic Data Center, the warming trend has
accelerated, from just over a tenth of one degree Fahrenheit per decade to
almost a third of a degree.

What? The warmest years on record in
the U.S. are 2006 and 1998? I guess this author missed corrections that were
made by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in August 2007 -- with
assistance from Steve McIntyre, of course! -- which now show the warmest year in
American history to have been 1934, and that 2006 has been knocked down to
fourth.

Alas, facts are unimportant to these folks:

By the end of the century, temperatures in the Northeastern states
are likely to rise by eight to 12 degrees Fahrenheit (at which time
snow-covered days will have been reduced to half of what we traditionally
experience). A 2007 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists on the
Northeast predicted that, under some higher-emission scenarios, "Only western
Maine is projected to retain a reliable ski season by the end of the century,
and only northern New Hampshire would support a snowmobiling season longer
than two months." Warmer weather and changing precipitation will result in a
fundamental change to winter recreation and what the report called "the winter
landscape."

How would some of you like to see your temperatures
eight to twelve degrees warmer than they are at this minute?

Those in
need of a chuckle should read the entire piece...if you can stand it.

GORDON BROWN is
preparing to sweep aside planning controls in villages and market towns to allow
the biggest rural housebuilding programme for a generation. Local authorities
are to be controversially ordered to adopt a relaxed approach to the building of
new homes in areas where planning permission has traditionally been refused. The
government has concluded that protecting the environment should no longer be the
overriding consideration when decisions are made about whether to allow
development in areas where locals are struggling to afford homes.

Under
reforms expected to be unveiled this month, councils will be told to:

*
earmark new building sites in every village and hamlet where affordable housing
is needed

* create a generation of new communities on the outskirts of
market towns, similar to Poundbury, the Prince of Wales's "model village".

The changes are aimed at helping the government to achieve its target of
building 3m new homes by 2020. All the main political parties agree that the
extra housing is needed, although the building programme is likely to be delayed
by the recession. About 16,000 small towns, villages and hamlets across England,
and dozens of market towns, could be affected by what is being described by
ministers as a "fundamental shake-up" of rural planning policy.

The
changes follow a government-commissioned investigation into housing shortages in
the English countryside by Matthew Taylor, a Liberal Democrat MP. His report,
published last year, was fiercely critical of "restrictive" planning policies in
the countryside, which he believes are turning many villages in the most sought
after areas of the countryside into exclusive enclaves of the rich and retired,
as locals are priced out. In areas such as Teignbridge, Devon, characterised by
"chocolate box villages", average house prices are 13.5 times the average
income. .....

More than 6m people in Britain live in rural communities
with populations of less than 3,000 where local authorities rarely allow new
properties to be built. The government is expected to announce incentives for
landowners to release sites for the new homes. In market towns, local
authorities will be encouraged to consider sacrificing green fields to give
newly built properties bigger gardens, instead of what Taylor describes as
"useless grass strips" where there is no space for children to play or trees to
be planted. The government is expected to argue that such fields are not
normally accessible to the public and represent only a tiny fraction of
agricultural land in England.

Two master speleothem (stalactite, stalagmite or flowstone cave
deposit) delta18O records were developed for New Zealand's eastern North Island
(ENI) and western South Island (WSI) for the period 2000 BC to about AD 1660 and
1825, respectively. The WSI record is a composite chronology composed of data
derived from four speleothems from Aurora, Calcite, Doubtful Xanadu and Waiau
caves, while the ENI record is a composite history derived from three
speleothems from Disbelief and Te Reinga caves.

What was
learned

For both the ENI and WSI delta18O records master speleothem
histories, their warmest periods fall within the AD 900-1100 time interval,
which is also where the peak warmth of a large portion of the temperature
records found in our Medieval Warm Period Project fall (see our Interactive Map
and Time Domain Plot).

What it means

Not wanting to acknowledge
that the earth was likely as warm as, or even warmer than, it is currently a
thousand or so years ago (when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was much lower
than it is today), the world's climate alarmists have been loath to admit there
was an MWP or Medieval Warm Period anywhere other than in countries surrounding
the North Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, the seven independent speleothem records
that produced the results reported by Lorrey et al. are of great importance to
the ongoing global warming debate, as they greatly advance the thesis that the
MWP was indeed a global phenomenon, and that there is thus nothing unusual,
unnatural or unprecedented about earth's current warmth, and that it therefore
need not be attributed to the historical increase in the air's CO2 content.

Working with a stalagmite found in China's Wanxiang Cave
(33ø19'N, 105ø00'E) -- which Zhang et al. (2008) say is located on the fringes
of the area currently affected by the Asian Monsoon and is thus sensitive to
(and integrates broad changes in) that annually-recurring phenomenon -- the
seventeen researchers developed a delta18O record with an average resolution of
2.5 years that "largely anti-correlates with precipitation" and runs
continuously from AD 190 to 2003.

Even more important than its close
ties with precipitation, in our opinion, Zhang et al. demonstrate that the
record "exhibits a series of centennial to multi-centennial fluctuations broadly
similar to those documented in Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions,
including the Current Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period and Dark
Age Cold Period."

And when one compares the peak
warmth thus implied by their data for the Current and Medieval Warm Periods, it
is readily seen that the Medieval Warm Period comes out on top as having been
the warmer of the two.

In another important set of comparisons,
Zhang et al. superimpose their delta18O record upon individual plots of Northern
Hemispheric temperature as derived by Esper et al. (2002), Moberg et al. (2003)
and Mann and Jones (2003). In the first of these comparisons, the two records
closely mimic each other, with both of them indicating greater peak warmth
during the Medieval Warm Period than during the Current Warm Period. The same is
likewise true of the second comparison; and in the third comparison the records
also closely mimic each other over the vast majority of their expanse.

Over the last decades of the 20th century, however, the temperatures of
the Mann and Jones record rise far above the temperatures implied by the Zhang
et al. record (and, therefore, those of the Esper et al. and Moberg et al.
records as well), which suggests to us that this anomalous behavior of the Mann
and Jones record is indicative of its possessing a major defect that is not
found in the other three datasets. And that defect, in our estimation, is Mann
and Jones' use of directly-measured as opposed to reconstructed temperatures
over their record's last few decades, which leads to their anomalous end-point
"oranges" not telling the same story as that told by everyone else's "apples."

Another point of great interest about the Zhang et al. record is that it
"correlates with solar variability, Northern
Hemisphere and Chinese temperature, Alpine glacial retreat, and Chinese cultural
changes." And since none of the last four phenomena can influence the first one,
it stands to reason that solar variability is what has driven the variations in
every other factor mentioned.

In fact, in a commentary that accompanies
Zhang et al.'s article, Kerr (2008) states that the Zhang et al. record is
described by other researchers as "amazing," "fabulous," and "phenomenal," and
that it "provides the strongest evidence yet for a link among sun, climate, and
culture."

In addition, we note that it provides equally strong evidence
for at least the Northern-Hemispheric-extent of the Medieval Warm Period and its
greater and more persistent warmth than that of the Current Warm Period.

The global warming community have
suggested for a while now that, given the almost-certain change in US
administration policy on global warming (remember John McCain's position), the
conference of the Kyoto Treaty parties in 2009 at Copenhagen would result in a
sea change in global action on greenhouse gas emissions. Copenhagen would
produce a new treaty, son-of-Kyoto, that would have full US participation, set
stringent and enforceable emission limits aimed at getting the world to the sort
of emissions levels some scientists demand, and start to involve the developing
world in emissions reductions.

This is not going to happen. For a start,
it looks like US policy is going to concentrate on getting a domestic settlement
in place before agreeing to any international action other than the traditional
"agreeing to agree." Secondly, with the world in financial chaos, governments
are going to look askance at any possibility of deep emissions cuts in the short
term because they know how costly that will be (the recent EU agreement - in
actuality an agreement for just 4% cuts by 2020 - is a great example). This will
make the drastic emissions cuts supposedly necessary in the medium-term
well-nigh impossible to achieve. Finally, developing countries have consistently
stated that they will not take on any emissions reductions, demanding the
developed world move first. Yet even if the developed world reduces its
emissions to zero by 2050, the developing world will have to keep its emissions
at around today's levels to meet just a 50% global reduction by 2050. That
represents a reduction from expected developing world emissions of 57%. To meet
the 80% reduction demanded by most scientists will require a severe reduction in
emissions from today's levels that represent widespread energy
poverty.

So despite the optimism, a genuine international agreement looks
some way off. Copenhagen will doubtless be sold as a triumph, but in reality the
world will be no closer to a genuine, binding international agreement than it
was in 2001.

British
birdwatcher makes fruitless journey to Norway only to find Arctic bird in her
own garden

It goes with Britain's current episodes of of Arctic
weather. See here

A
birdwatcher who made a fruitless journey to Norway to see a rare snow bunting,
returned home to Britain only to discover one of the species had landed on her
garden fence. Janet Davies, 58, an amateur ornithologist, spent three weeks in
the Arctic including a week in Spitzbergen hoping to catch sight of a snow
bunting. She failed to see one of the distinctive birds but was startled when
she returned to home in Helston, Cornwall, and found one in her
garden.

She said: "It was an expensive trip. Organised birdwatching
holidays can be pricey. "We were in Spitzbergen for a week but I never saw a
snow bunting and it is one of the birds I wanted to see most. "It never happened
and I thought it would be the one that got away and I would never cross it off
my list. "But then lo and behold one shows up in my back garden in Cornwall. I
looked out of my window and there it was. The odds of it happening and showing
up in a birdwatcher's back garden must be huge. It must have been blown off
course. Sightings of them in Britain are few and far between."

Mrs
Davies, a community carer, added that the bunting arrived in her garden on
Sunday and was mixing with some chaffinches. "I feed wild bird seed to them and
the snow bunting is quite happily eating it from the ground." She said it was
believed to be a female. "It is different from North American species because it
has not got the brown back. It is totally white on its upper shoulders and back.
We think it is female because of its brown head and speckled buff breast. That
would be the winter plumage of the female." Mrs Davies added: "It is about the
size of a plump chaffinch or sparrow. Its colour is beautiful and when it flies
it stands out. I worry it might be in danger from predators because it is so
conspicuous. I have put out extra seed for it."

She joked: "I am hoping
to go Antarctica when I retire and when I get back I am half expecting a penguin
to show up at the back door." Snow buntings, which have striking 'snowy'
plumages, are normally found in Scandinavia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. They
are only occasionally seen in Scotland and eastern England.

He is the (conservative) environment
minister in the N. Ireland government

Spending billions on trying to
reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries
of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said. The
DUP minister has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for claiming that
ongoing climatic shifts are down to nature and not mankind. But while
acknowledging his views on global warming may not be popular, the East Antrim MP
said he was not prepared to be bullied by eco fundamentalists. "I'll not be
stopped saying what I believe needs to be said about climate change," he said.
"Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article
about it

"I think in 20 years' time we will look back at this whole
climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into
spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of
rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all.
Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria
I've got to say as well. "I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most
of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about
climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to
explain how they believe there's a connection between CO2 emission and the
effects which they claim there's going to be, if you ask them to explain the
thought process or the modelling that is required and the assumptions behind
that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn't have a clue. "They
simply get letters about it from all these lobby groups, it's popular and
therefore they go along with the flow - and that would be ok if there were no
implications for it, but the implications are immense."

He said while
people in the western world were facing spiralling fuel bills as a result of
efforts to cut CO2, the implications in poorer countries were graver. "What are
the problems that face us either locally and internationally. Are those not the
things we should be concentrating on?" he asked. "HIV, lack of clean water,
which kills millions of people in third world countries, lack of education. "A
fraction of the money we are currently spending on climate change could actually
eradicate those three problems alone, a fraction of it. "I think as a society we
sometimes need to get some of these things in perspective and when I listen to
some of the rubbish that is spoken by some of my colleagues in the Assembly it
amuses me at times and other times it angers me."

Despite his views on
CO2, Mr Wilson said he does not intend to backtrack on commitments made by his
predecessor at the Department of the Environment, Arlene Foster, to make the
Stormont estate carbon neutral. He said while he wasn't worried about reducing
CO2 output, he said the policy would help to cut fuels bills. "I don't couch
those actions in terms of reducing Co2 emissions," he said. "I don't care about
Co2 emissions to be quite truthful because I don't think it's all that important
but what I do believe is, and perhaps this is where there can be some
convergence, as far as using fuel more efficiently that is good for our economy;
that makes us more competitive. If we can save in schools hundreds of thousands
on fuel that's more money being put for books or classroom assistants.

"So yes there are things we can do. If you want to express it terms of
carbon neutral, I just express it terms of making the place more efficient, less
wasteful and hopefully that will release money to do the proper things that we
should be doing."

Friday, January 02, 2009

Cool 2008 warms climate
debate

The fact that the article below is from Australia's
national daily is an encouraging sign. Can you imagine the NYT printing the news
that 2008 was an unusually cold year and giving perspectives on that from
skeptics?

While the official figures are not yet in, 2008 is widely
tipped to be declared the coolest year of the century. Whether this is a serious
blow to global warming alarmists depends entirely on who you talk to. Anyone
looking for a knockout blow in the global warming debate in 2008 were sorely
disappointed. The weather refused to co-operate, offering mixed messages from
record cold temperatures across North America to heatwaves across Europe and the
Middle East earlier in the year. Even in Australia yesterday [midsumnmer] there
were flurries of snow on the highest peaks of a shivering Tasmania, while the
north of the country sweltered in above-average temperatures.

A cool
2008 may not fit in with doomsday scenarios of some of the more extreme
alarmists. But nor, meteorologists point out, does it prove the contrary, that
global warming is a myth. In Australia this year, on the most recent figures,
the average temperature was 22.18C. Last year it was 22.48C. In 2006 it was
22.28C, and in 2005 22.99C. Senior meteorologist with the National
Meteorological Centre Rod Dickson said that based on data from January to
November, 2008 might be the coolest this century but it was still Australia's
15th warmest year in the past 100 years. "Since 1990, the Australian annual mean
temperature has been warmer than the 1961-1990 average [Hey! That is not the
100 year average. It is the average of a generally cool period] for all but
two years, 2008 being one of those years," he said. In Australia overall, 2008
on the most recent date, was 0.37C higher than for the 30-year average to 1990
of 21.81C. Worldwide, 2008 was expected to be about 0.31C higher than the
30-year average to 1990, of 14C.

One of Australia's best-known sceptics
of man-made global warming, former head of the National Climate Centre William
Kininmonth, said the cool year did not fit in with the greenhouse gas theory
that suggests the globe should be continuing to warm. "All the reports from the
northern hemisphere of record snows and freezing temperatures would suggest that
2008 will follow the predictions and officially be declared the coolest of the
century," he said. "But the only thing we can really deduce is that the warming
trend from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s appears to have halted."

Another well-known sceptic, geologist Bob Carter, said critics were
jumping on the cold northern hemisphere winter to dismiss global warming, but
climate was a long-term phenomenon and there was nothing particularly unusual
about present circumstances.

But Don White, of consultancy firm
Weatherwatch, said while last year was likely to end up the coolest year this
century, this needed to be put into perspective. "If the same temperatures had
occurred in the early 1990s it would have been the warmest ever," he said. "The
year 2008 may have been colder than the previous seven years, but it was still
warmer than most years prior to 1993." Mr White said Melbourne, Hobart and
Adelaide had well below average rainfall for the calendar year 2008, with just
449mm in Melbourne, compared with an average annual rainfall of 652mm. Hobart
received 407mm in 2008 compared with an average of 618mm. Sydney was also
slightly below average at 1083 mm, compared with an average of 1213mm. Brisbane,
Perth and Darwin were all wetter than normal.

Winter storm warnings and plummeting
temperatures put a chill on New Year's Eve plans for hundreds of thousands of
revelers. Thousands of homes and businesses in the Midwest had no electric
lights for the holiday because of wind damage. Temperatures in the teens _ with
wind chills below zero _ were forecast for midnight and the annual ball drop in
New York's Times Square and for the First Night celebration in Boston. Boston
officials canceled the city's traditional midnight display because of a winter
storm that brought wind gusts up to 40 mph. Up to 11 inches of snow was also
forecast in the region.

Up to a million revelers, jammed tightly together
by intense security, were expected to hunker down against the icy wind in Times
Square to watch a five-minute blizzard of balloons and more than a ton of
confetti. But the weather put a crimp in the festivities for some. New Bedford,
Mass., put its fireworks display off until Jan. 8 and Baltimore pushed its show
back to Thursday evening because of high winds and rough harbor
waters.

The National Weather Service posted winter storm warnings and
advisories for parts of New England, upstate New York, northern Ohio, northern
Minnesota and North Dakota, and sections of Montana, Idaho, Oregon and
Washington. In western New York state, at least 8 inches of snow had fallen by
midday in the Buffalo and Rochester areas, and morning rush hour traffic crept
at a near standstill on the New York State Thruway south of Albany. "It's really
affecting the entire state," said weather service meteorologist Dave Zaff in
Buffalo. Single-digit temperatures and sustained wind of up to 20 mph were
expected to combine to produce wind chills as low as 25 below zero during the
night in parts of New York state, meteorologists said.

A Roman Catholic
priest in northern Virginia was killed by a falling tree Wednesday while trying
to clear another fallen tree from a road amid wind gusts. Rev. Michael C. Kelly,
53, was pastor at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville. Power
outages in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia caused by high winds
cut electricity to nearly 50,000 homes and businesses Wednesday. Baltimore Gas
and Electric Company says new outages are likely as winds of up to 60 mph
continue howling into the night. The upper Midwest started the day with
temperatures as low as 33 below zero at Wahpeton, N.D., and 24 below at
Brainerd, Minn.

More snow fell Wednesday in parts of Michigan as utility
crews endured morning temperatures in the teens to restore power to customers
still without service since a weekend wind storm knocked down trees and power
lines. The state's major utilities said about 11,000 homes and businesses were
still blacked out Wednesday afternoon. In the Ohio Valley, Duke Energy said
nearly 11,700 homes and business were blacked out by wind damage during the
night in southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky, but most were back on line
Wednesday morning.

Up to 5 inches of snow was likely Wednesday in
northern sections of North Dakota and Minnesota, on top of the foot or more that
fell Tuesday, the weather service said. December was already a record month for
snow in North Dakota, with 33.3 inches at Bismarck. In Minnesota, Tuesday was
the 16th day in December in which measurable snow had fallen at the
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Juanita Grosz didn't even bother to
measure the snow at her home in Garrison, N.D., northwest of Bismarck. "It
doesn't matter _ I just know that it's a lot," Grosz said Tuesday. "Everything
is solid white; there isn't a track anywhere."

Climate Change: The
Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess what:
Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too.

As we've noted,
2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may indeed be the
coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115
lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October. Global thermometers stopped
rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5
degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global
climate models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since
2000.

When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of
100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers
briefly drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle
begins. But this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet.
The first seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August
there were no sunspots at all - zero - something that has not occurred since
1913.

According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years,
three previous such events - what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer
Minimums - have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the
Little Ice Age (1500-1750). The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global
warmers because it serves as a reminder of how the earth warms and cools
naturally over time. It had to be ignored in the calculations that produced the
infamous and since-discredited hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in
warming alleged to be caused by man.

The answer to this dilemma has
supposedly been found by two Stanford researchers, Richard Nevle and Dennis
Bird, who announced their "findings" at the annual meeting of the American
Geophysical Union in San Francisco. According to them, man not only is causing
contemporary warming. He also caused the cooling that preceded it. According to
Bird and Nevle, before Columbus ruined paradise, native Americans had deforested
a significant portion of the continent and converted the land to agricultural
purposes. Less CO2 was then absorbed from the atmosphere, and the earth was
toasty.

Then a bunch of nasty old white guys arrived and depopulated the
native populations through war and the diseases they brought with them. This led
to the large-scale abandonment of agricultural lands. The subsequent
reforestation of the continent caused temperatures to drop enough to bring on
the Little Ice Age. Implicit in this research is that the world would be fine if
man wasn't in the way. We either make the world too cold or too hot, a view held
by many in high places.

In a speech at Harvard last November, Harvard
physicist John Holden, President-elect Obama's choice to be his science adviser
as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, presented a
"top 10" list of warming solutions. Topping the list was "limiting population,"
as if man was a plague upon the earth. This is a major tenet of green dogma that
bemoans the fact that the pestilence called mankind comes with cars, factories
and overconsumption of fossil fuels and other resources.

R. Timothy
Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience
Centre of Canada's Carleton University, says: "I and the first-class scientists
I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular
fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and
the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet." Indeed, a look at a
graph of solar irradiance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration shows little solar activity during the Little Ice Age and
significant activity during recent times. Don't blame Dick and Jane - blame
sunspots.

The Innate Problems With the Australian Labor
Party's Emissions Trading Scheme

By Australian Senator Barnaby Joyce

I'm going to be serious and quite frank with you here as the issues I am
about to raise will be contentious not only amongst coalition MP's but also my
own party. Every age comes up with a witch to burn, a sect that apparently if it
is not succumbed will bring about the destruction of an empire, an issue that
occupies the rigours of the day. It is almost as if those in the position of
power and their surrounding Illuminati with time to spare are terrified of the
banality of daily existence and so search for an issue that demands blind
obedience to conquer it.

The most dangerous place to be in these times of
immense fervour is in the counter position that calls in to question the logic
of the euphoria. Those who dare to question are held as heretics. There is a
communal life fest in being part of the pack or staying silent. It is hard for
them to separate from the reality that the world is fairly constant and
predictable and that things of the greater nature of the universe have remained
beyond our control in the past and generally shall remain so into the
future.

It was interesting to hear the recent discussion between Freeman
Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton, with Robyn Williams, on The Science Show on ABC Radio National, when
he rightly stated that the world has many problems but global warming is not one
of the biggest ones. As Dyson said:

"Sea level rise has been going on much longer, long before global
warming, and it probably has very little to do with human activities. All we
know for sure is that sea level has been rising steadily for about 10,000
years and we'll have to do something about that."

I don't
pretend for one moment to be a scientist but in my role in the Senate it is
implicit in my job to be a sceptic , to question and to consider all sides and
be open to the views of many rather than one view.

My current concern
with the emissions trading scheme is that a religious fervour has built up
around the altar of global warming. Those who serve at the altar have become
ruthless in their denigration of alternate views. This fervour has now received
its imprimatur by reason of a new tax, or should it be tithe to be paid to the
Rudd Labor Government. The similarity in this newest forte of socialism can be
defined by the ultimate purpose of divesting the individual of their asset or
income stream on the premise of an apparent greater moral good. But who becomes
the benefactors of this divestment? The administrators and the traders. Their
pockets are lined with the property and income of others.

I don't
remember anybody paying rural Australia for the vegetation that was divested
from their asset, rural land, during the tree-clearing legislation so we could
meet our Kyoto target and unfortunately I don't hear any chorus of questioning
as to why in the future rural producers, after trying to feed the nation and
others, will have to be dragged into an emissions trading scheme that could make
many of them unviable.

Where is all this heading?

The National
Party has been at the forefront of saying this is all getting beyond ridiculous
and becoming dangerous. They are also being supported by unlikely allies such as
the Australian Workers Union who see their own members, who have been part of
the process of delivering wealth to our nation from their labours have had their
industries now termed `dirty' by the new environmental high priests. In this new
Orwellian frenzy everyone is looking over their shoulder.

Australia is
going down a path of an ETS without the co-operation of the major emitting
countries. It says that it is morally right to do so. The Rudd Labor Government
and others say that unilateral action is a moral imperative. I look forward to
that same fervour of moralistic rectitude as they approach the Mugabe issue in
Zimbabwe. He is certainly in the wrong and it is on this new platform of morals
that we await our dear leader to launch an attack in a very worthwhile and
immediate practice of ridding our planet of this tyrant, Mugabe. That is
something that would be of an exceptional benefit.

The government is
currently honey-coating the fact that it will be collecting a vast amount of
money from the Australian people. The ETS will collect $11.5 billion in its
first year, $12 billion in its second, it will force up the price of goods and
services, it will encourage industries to move to where an ETS is not present.
Australia generates 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions and this ETS
will reduce world levels by the smallest sliver, which self-evidently will have
nil effect on global climate whether you believe in climate warming or
not.

People will lose their job or their business because of the ETS.
They will be the modern-day witches burning on the environmentalist fanatical
pyre because their role in this new dynamic was unacceptable. For regional
Australia we look forward to the ridiculous prospect of 34 million possible
hectares of forest to take the place of farming land, formerly the backbone of
so many regional towns and generations of good, honest working Australians'
lives.

The history of human civilisations has the disturbing trait of
devising ways to put themselves out of business, sometimes through no more than
their own excesses and belief structures of their governing bureaucracies. The
only protection against these excesses is the capacity of the general population
to question, to doubt and to disagree.

I have no doubt that as a world
we must become efficient with the utilisation of our resources. We must give the
greatest number of people the greatest access to the highest standard of living,
it is only fair. Efficiency, more than emissions, must become the trading scheme
that brings a cleaner, fairer future. Encourage efficiency and keep the
government's hands out of people's pockets and off their assets and that will
bring a greater propensity to a long-term broad-based better world for all of
us.

Global
Warming Is Killing Australia's Great Barrier Reef and Other
Bulldust

The Australian Greens and Eco-Fundamentalist have declared
that Australia's ETS reduction target of 5% means we will lose the Great Barrier
Reef. Ask any green and they will swear that's the truth even though they have
never visited one square inch of The Great Barrier Reef which includes over 2900
reefs, around 940 islands and cays, and stretches 2300 kms along the Queensland
coastline. Heres what a couple of guys who dive the reef most days have to
say:.

Shark expert Ben Cropp said yesterday the outer reef was more or
less the same as when he started diving 50 years ago... I've got a gut feeling
the reef will cope with climate change, if it exists, but that's just a gut
feeling. Scientists say you aren't allowed to have a gut feeling, but my gut
feeling is based on diving the reef for half a century. But then again, I'm
not their kind of expert.

And Patrick Ligthart, is a volunteer
with the Low Isles Preservation Society and cleans away rubbish and maintains
the reefs around the Low Isles.

. said his section of the reef had never looked better, and he was
sceptical about predictions of its demise. I come out to the reef all the
time, and the reef's in good shape.. even old timers say the reef here has
never looked better. I don't know why these fear-mongers keep making these
claims

Yet Bob Brown and The Greens continue unabated with their
fear mongering claims that Climate Change is killing the iconic Great Barrier
Reef. It follows then that Brown and the Greens would lie to the Australian
public about other things too.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Just some short posts until
tomorrow:

`Tis the season for global warming scaremongering

"`Twas once again the season for global warming scaremongering this
month. New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel's latest foray into the
fabulous world of global warming make-believe ('State's plan to curb global
warming tepid,' December 26, Asbury Park Press) would make even Pinocchio blush.
Tittel claimed global warming is causing increased drought conditions in New
Jersey. He did not offer any supporting data or evidence. And little wonder:
National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) precipitation records for New Jersey show
there has been no increase in drought conditions in the state."

"Hundreds of miles from the nearest power plant, the roughly 700
residents of Galena, Alaska, depend on costly generator-supplied electricity for
their homes. But now, they want to go nuclear. No, not a traditional hulking
nuclear power plant. That would be far too big. Instead, town leaders have
signed up for what some call a `pocket nuke' or `nuclear battery' that produces
just 10 megawatts - about 1 percent of the energy an average nuclear plant
generates. Japanese manufacturer Toshiba has told the town it will install its
new `4S' (Super-safe, small, and simple) reactor free of charge by 2012."

"Big brother wants to tax the movement of citizens. As explained on
the Oregon Governor's website: `As Oregonians drive less and demand more
fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new
way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system.' Following
the tried and true pattern for social engineering they first concoct a guilt and
fear-based campaign designed to get people to choose more fuel efficient cars,
to burn food as fuel to the greatest extent possible and to lay the ground work
for justifying future government interventions in the market."

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of
the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human
choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement
arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because
they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen
to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been
clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the
planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

"In
science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge;
in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland).
No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to
acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties;
blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Al
Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks
for itself, doesn't it?

For centuries there was a scientific
consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible
element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global
warming is the new phlogiston.

Motives: Many people would like to be
kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most
people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all
sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive
is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth
regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of
all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a
Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution"
(1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find
the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came
up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages,
famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human
intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many
more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate
you.

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the
urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

Time was, people warning the
world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own
the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist
movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" --
George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

Against the
long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages
etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the
entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a
difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th
century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent
NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the
20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because
they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it
is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is
warming. See here.
So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

There goes
another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. -
Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

The
latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because
more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the
water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it
will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let
alone acidic (pH less than 7).

The chaos theory people have told us
for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can
cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate
experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over
periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us
all a break!

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I
a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit
of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe
that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has
had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against
that claim.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism
tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous
pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of
academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the
Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones
who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their
careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence
(retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors
in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once
were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that
seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have
seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to
call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are
already dead. (Reid
Bryson and John Daly are
particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill
Gray and Vince
Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored
in vain.

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics.
Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of
capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave
evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by
an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an
economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in
a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of
the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work
and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that
"liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its
folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Seeing that we
are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the
carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must
have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the
side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants.
And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research.
Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of
"The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof.
Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real
party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the
world.

There is an "ascetic
instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them
to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were
once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most
striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have
that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments
they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic
way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional
belief that the planet needs "saving".

A classic example of how the
sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

The Lockwood
& Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming
Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to
account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is
nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source
that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all
but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is
invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has
in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see.
Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not
stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth!
Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might
even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that
warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling
phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly
backwards. See my
post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here
and here
and here
for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies
are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer
time series is used. A
remarkable example from Sociology:"The modern literature on hate crimes
began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of
Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South
and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the
correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words,
when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001,
Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that
demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings
in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929.
After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic
condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation
disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be
sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the
correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but
that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the
20th century had been considered.

About Me

Name: John Ray

Location: Brisbane, Australia

I am a 5'10", jocular former university teacher aged
64 at the time of writing in 2008 who still has a fair bit of hair. I am
Australian born of working class origins and British ancestry. I spent a year in
Britain in 1977 but my last trip there was in 1984. My doctorate is in
psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher.
In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and
"progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. My main interests are blogging,
classical music, history, the stockmarket, current affairs and languages. I have
been married four times to four fine women with whom I am still on amicable
terms. I have one son born in 1987. In medical matters I speak mainly as a
frequent user of medical services from Australia's superb private health network
-- though I have also made a few minor contributions to the academic literature
of medicine. Fuller biographical notes here